Are A.B.’s books banned?
A recent study shows that about 40% of banned books have a LGBTQ protagonists; another states that 40% have black ones. The tween protagonist in The Secret Lab has a lesbian friend; the teen in Secret of the Urns comes from a triad, i.e., a non-traditional family comprised of two men and a woman, and she has a sexual fling on a tourist planet; the young hero in Mind Games is an orphan who ends up with an older man; and the STEM teen in Origins is black and has a child out of wedlock. I suppose all A. B. Carolan’s books could be in trouble with the book-banners, if not already banned.
I assume that the studies mentioned focus on young adult novels. If they don’t, there are a few other novels in our literary tradition that might become or already be targets! (I had one crazy lady from the Midwest go after me for using profanity in The Midas Bomb. I basically ignored her. The book takes place in NYC and is for adults, but the mother of a teen interested in purchasing the book at a book event assured me that her daughter could read such books. After that diatribe from the Midwestern lady, I asked the mother to make sure.)
Thank God I didn’t live in a red state when I was a kid! (Texas is #1 among book-banning states, Florida #2, and others do their part in censoring literary works.) I was able to read more or less what I wanted to read, not what some fascist personality allowed me to read, for both fiction and non-fiction. I got my hand slapped in US history (this in the true-blue state of California) because I’d about and reported on the case against FDR for not warning Oahu about the eminent attack on Pearl Harbor so he could public sentiment on his side to enter the war. (I received an A+, though, because I researched the hell out of that, not initially believing what I’d read! It’s still an open question as far as American history’s concerned, but not in my mind.)
Next thing you know, especially if the fascists control all of national education, we’ll have a nationwide ban on Podkayne of Mars! Sexual mores on Mars as portrayed by Heinlein are a bit risque, you know. If not Podkayne, think what they’ll do with Strangers in a Strange Land. That might even get the fascist evangelicals involved! I read them both in junior high (middle school for easterners).
It’s true that book-banners attack school librarians, school teachers, and parents from both the left and the right, but the right is now the worst offender, and mostly in the red states where they already have an autocratic state governor, legislature, and court judges. Book-banning is basically a fascist activity, of course, as part of the control of all media—just think of Hitler and Mao and more recent autocrats like Putin and Xi. In the US, radicals on the left want to ban Huckleberry Finn; radicals on the right—well, they go after a lot more. And what they can’t ban, they try to rewrite, destroying the author’s story and voice in the process.
They can threaten librarians so much, especially if they take a stand against censorship, that they’re even afraid of going to work. Moreover, they’ve even demanded that books be removed from libraries that aren’t even there! I’m willing to bet the book-banning crazies haven’t read half the books they want to ban because they just take some radical fascist’s word that they’re bad for young minds.
In a democracy, book banning has no place. Reading what one wants to read is an essential freedom; censorship is the weapon of autocrats. If you don’t want to read a particular book, and if you don’t want your kids to read it, you and they don’t have to do so. I’ve yet to see a school that doesn’t let a parent or kid opt out from reading a particular book because of its content.
There are universal lessons to be learned from books, even fiction (good fiction has to seem real, and by doing so, they deal with real issues). In particular, books specifically written for young adults often are teaching moments for their readers. Like A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries, basically focused on the eternal battle between good and evil, YA stories offer a lot, so much so that they’re popular with many adults as well. (Let’s call them young-at-heart to distinguish them from the old fascist book-banners in the red states.)
Book banning doesn’t preserve our democracy; it contributes to its destruction!
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Mind Games. What could go wrong with a plan to give androids ESP powers? Find out in A. B. Carolan’s entertaining sci-fi mystery about a paranormal teen who searches for her foster father’s murderer. While all A.B.’s books are excellent reading experiences for readers of all ages, this third book from him might be the best one of the four. It’s full of thrills and suspense, a tour de force loaded with futuristic politics we have yet to experience on our planet. Available in ebook and print formats (I don’t know why B&N doesn’t show the print version, but it exists), it represents excellent book-report material for your young adult, and any hard-sci-fi-loving adult will enjoy it too.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
