Brent Hartinger is tomorrow's live chat author on the Readgirlz MySpace page. I'm in the middle of reading The Order of the Poison Oak right now for my YALSA popular paperbacks sex booklist nominations. Geez, I love being able to say that I'm on the Sex Committee. It cracks me up every time! :) Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Hartinger is a great author! I've heard him speak once before at a conference. His topic was on gay and lesbians portrayed in teen literature. Most of his books touch on this topic. I know that Readergirlz is doing this month-long celebration of teen literature and teen authors in collaboration with Teen Read Week, but I think it's worth pointing out that this particular week is Banned Books Week. I had always wondered how authors feel when one of their books are removed from a library for being deemed inappropriate. Mr. Hartinger brought it to life for me in his talk a few years back. His book Geography Club had been banned in his own community. How very sad for him AND his community. What message did that library send out to their community when they decided to remove a book about a group of gay and lesbian teens who find support in their "Geography Club" at school? I don't remember if the book had been removed from a school or a public library, but it breaks my heart to hear about these types of challenges throughout the nation.
I know that this post is quite a bit more scattered than my posts are usually, but there was a lot in this one paragraph. I hope you give his books a chance!
No comments:
Post a Comment