I really should have been clearer in that I would never suggest such books should ever be kept from kids, or offered. It's just forcing them on kids is a whole different ballgame. Of course, the pro censorship lobby talks about how we're forcing dark books on our young people too, and I'm left going "stop stealing my words! That doesn't mean what you think it means."
The problem with a single canon, or saying a book is essential, is that it means people who couldn't read it for whatever reason are held to be somehow deficient. When I wrote this post, I hadn't even thought of that.
After I moved, my new middle school combined the kids from all the classes in the same grade who couldn't or wouldn't read a specific book for assigned reading into one group, which usually had ten or twelve kids, and they got to choose from a short list what they would read together. While the rest of us read Speak, they read Stargirl. None of us were allowed to get out of reading Night though... And that'll traumatize anybody. Of course, that's the point.
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The problem with a single canon, or saying a book is essential, is that it means people who couldn't read it for whatever reason are held to be somehow deficient. When I wrote this post, I hadn't even thought of that.
After I moved, my new middle school combined the kids from all the classes in the same grade who couldn't or wouldn't read a specific book for assigned reading into one group, which usually had ten or twelve kids, and they got to choose from a short list what they would read together. While the rest of us read Speak, they read Stargirl. None of us were allowed to get out of reading Night though... And that'll traumatize anybody. Of course, that's the point.