A figurative burning of books: How dare children grow up to think for themselves

Himself – an author – once wrote a book about bestiality. Well, actually he wrote books about a land of fairytales.

Published in 2006, it had huge crossover appeal to teenagers and adults, won awards, and still appears on recommended reading lists – and books that should be banned.

The problem is that each familiar story re-told has a twist.

Some hilarious, some dark, with Red Ridinghood’s being that she is a canny young woman who measures up the hot man-wolf and decides to have her way with him, going “willingly to lie with wolves”.

Good for her.

You might say: how empowering. That wolf was a metaphor anyway. Go, Red – take ownership of your sexuality, girl!

Or you could clutch your bosom, shriek “bestiality!” and demand that the book be banned.

And yet the Grimm Brothers’ fairytales on which the book was based, taken themselves from folk tales, were always life lessons and cautionary tales.

They offered children the truths of the world in bite-sized, palatable chunks.

I thought about this last week when a town in Michigan voted to de-fund their local library because it carries books that some people don’t like.

Particularly books with gay or trans themes, claiming children were being “groomed”. It’s a figurative burning of books.

The truly worrying issue is that such actions are growing: book challenges in public schools and libraries more than doubled in the past year, affecting 1 600 titles, according to the American Library Association.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a group calling themselves the Alpha Men – so manly! – are protesting against a colourful drag queen who stages story hour for children in libraries.

The blokes turn up at events to shut them down, scaring kids and their parents so much so that police have been called in.

Yet none of the Alpha Men have offered to set up a story-time group…

They need to read more.

Research shows fiction increases empathy, opening up a world of other realities, of people Not Like Us, of wider understanding.

I suppose this is what the naysayers are most afraid of, that children who are introduced to multicoloured, multicultural, nuanced humanity might think for themselves – and might dare to think differently.