The Outsiders
Kids need controversial books like The Higher Power of Lucky.
by Lisa Carver
February 27, 2007
I thought my best friend had the perfect family, and I moved out of my mother's house into hers. Twenty years later, it turns out my friend's father was drunk that whole time and I just didn't notice, I guess because the mother covered for him so well — leaving her no time for my young friend, who ended up, like many children of alcoholics, frozen with perfectionism and full of anxiety and constant dire predictions. Would it have really hurt for her to have stumbled across My Ol' Man by Patricia Polacco, or one of the other books about children of alcoholics and enablers?
The Times guy apparently doesn't want his daughter reading books like this because he's not an alcoholic and he thinks it would scare or scar her. But my dad wasn't an alcoholic, and I don't think reading that would have hurt me. But I might have gained a little empathy for my friend.
It's Just A Plant by Ricardo Cortes explains — you guessed it — what marijuana is. In an interview with Bill O'Reilly, Cortes tries to answer a question as to why the mother and doctor are talking to this child in the book about marijuana at all (when the child asks).
"It's not for children," Cortes begins, "but there are adults that need it for medical — "
It's Just a Plant by Ricardo Cortes
"Why the but?" O'Reilly interrupts. "Why are you giving the kids the but?"
"Truth is ninety percent but, you nasty beast!" I yelled at my TV. But Mr.
O'Reilly didn't hear me. He'd moved on to taking "an inside look at what some are calling Al Qaeda High, a school in Virginia that some say promotes radical Islam."
My favorite of the "but" books is Broken Umbrellas by Kate Spohn. It's about an old woman who sleeps on roofs and collects umbrellas. It gives the backstory, how she immigrated to the United States as a little girl and learned to make a game out of poverty. Stylish and kind, she did well at school and teaching at a university. It describes, better than any for-adults book I've ever read, her subsequent descent into schizophrenia and homelessness. It mentions the hard, odd parts of her daily existence, but it also captures the beauty and kindness and optimism she finds as she "walked along feeling lucky."
Not mentioning in children's books so-called controversial subjects (they're not, really; they're just life) in order to protect children is the same as how, in the 50s, blacks or Jews or single parents weren't part of stories. Not because they didn't exist back then, but because everyone somehow tacitly agreed to pretend they didn't. There is no Other. There's just us, and we're a motley crew.
©2007 Lisa Carver and Nerve Media
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