I’ll admit that when my then first-grader and I sat down to read James and the Giant Peach, right away I felt the urge to shield her. But not from the word “ass” which comes up frequently. And not because there’s whiskey drinking and snuff snorting and child-beating — I love that stuff! (I mean, in literature.) What gave me pause were James’s cruel guardians Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. Because one is suuuuuuper fat and one is suuuuuuper skinny and their fatness and skinniness are laughed at and criticized and meant to be totally disgusting.

James and the Giant Peach read more like Me and My Giant Body Issues, at least in the first few chapters.

We kept reading but I was in high-alert mode. The last thing I wanted was to give permission to my kid to laugh at — or even think sinister things about — people because of the size and shape of their bodies. My girl’s a girl! And Dahl’s literature is powerful! Would his words about Aunt Sponge (the fatty) — “she had a white flabby face” and was “like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage” — come back to her some day in a particularly critical moment in front of the mirror? If I had laughed, would she have remembered that, thinking maybe Mommy agreed?

This is the crazy thing about censorship. Am I honestly going to hold a book accountable for the entirety of one girl’s self-image? Or can she just go ahead and hear a story and soak up Dahl’s writing, which includes descriptions of extreme body size to physically illustrate two very extreme personalities? (They’re total meanies!) Same goes for other books that get challenged. One story? Really? That’s your kid’s great undoing?

The aunts went away early on in the book and I packed the body critiques away in my mind for the next time we would read it. I barely batted an eye at the rest of what some consider shocking language and imagery — cause for some elementary schools to stop reading it, pull it from the shelves and generally get the classic filed under “one of the most challenged books.”

Some examples: a grasshopper declared “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!”; a spider licks his lips which is apparently sexually suggestive; and then all the mystical and magical elements (they’re flying around in a Giant Peach, it’s true.)

I’m all for licked lips (certain that the sexual element goes right over my kid’s head) and magical elements. As for the Mexican comment, it’s referencing a part of a culture that, indeed, eats fried bugs.

What I love about book challenges and right-out banning is that they are a real testament to the power of good literature, creative language, original imagery. Sure, we all hate certain realities of this world where we’re raising our kids. And as jumpy as it makes adults to be reminded of all this crap when it comes up in innocent children’s stories, I can’t think of a safer way to get a first glimpse at sex or racism or brutal adults or the empty, scared feeling of being alone, really alone — or even the joy (and consequences) of breaking the rules than between book covers. Adults get the well-worn version of life’s good and bad all the time in books. Why should kids miss out? Can anybody honestly name a single book (or movie or song lyric) that corrupted their otherwise perfect child? 

My daughter doesn’t really remember the aunts, except that they were scary. In the meantime, she’s heard plenty of body talk since we read it (mostly, incidentally, from adult women). I’m sure she’s heard the word “ass” too, and while we’re not big whiskey drinkers and have never managed to develop a steady snuff habit, she knows about booze too. Did she learn it from James and the Giant Peach? Doubtful. Maybe she heard it there first, but that’s a pretty big world out there. Just what do book banners think they can actually accomplish?

We’re closing the book today on Banned Books Week. Tell us, which banned books did you/will you read? 

More from Banned Books Week

Kama Sutra for Kids

Smother the Fire and Read a Banned Book

In the Night Kitchen

Little Women

R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps

Sarah Palin

And Tango Makes Three

Shel Silverstein

Where’s Waldo?

Judy Blume and ‘Forever’

Is Racism Packaged as Children’s Literature Defensible?

Roald Dahl’s The Witches

Go Back To Strollerderby

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