BookDragon Blog

What timing … today marks the beginning of 2010’s Banned Books Week (through October 2), and bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is back in the banned book news.

Last week, Wesley Scroggins, an associate professor [a professor!!!] of management at Missouri State University, wrote an editorial for The Springfield News-Leader, characterizing Anderson’s bestselling young adult novel, Speak, as soft pornography, then asks, “How can Christian men and women expose children to such immorality?”

Speak is about a rising 9th grade girl who is raped by an older student at a party. The book is harrowing, gut-wrenching, tragic … and it’s all too real. I had a college friend once tell me that I was the only close friend she had that had not been date-raped. Anderson responded on her blog, “The fact that he [Scroggins] sees rape as sexually exciting (pornographic) is disturbing, if not horrifying. It gets worse, if that’s possible, when he goes on to completely mischaracterize the book.”

So what does Speak have to do with Wintergirls? At the end of the Wintergirls recording, Anderson herself reads “Listen,” her first ‘public’ poem, written for the 10th anniversary of Speak. Only the first and last stanzas are hers; the rest are taken verbatim from the tens of thousands of letters and emails she has received from young adults around the world who read Speak and found the courage to voice their experiences. Click here to hear it for yourself; if you ever needed a reason why not to ban books, Anderson’s “Listen” says it all.

Wintergirls is another of Anderson’s ‘scare-you-to-death-if-you’re-a-parent’ titles. I say that with awe and respect. Like Speak, Twisted, Chains, Anderson’s Wintergirls takes on a wrenching subject, this time teenage suicide and eating disorders.

Cassie dies alone, in a motel room, after calling Lia 33 times; Lia never answered. Best friends since childhood, Lia and Cassie have spent the last six months estranged, but their bond remains – even with Cassie’s death, Lia – now also driven by extreme guilt – is still competing to be the thinnest, perfect ‘wintergirl.’ For Lia, Cassie refuses to ever leave her ..

Now 18, Lia’s descent is told first-person, desperation literally captured with crossed out confessions in the text (bleeped over rather annoyingly in the recording – I know, I know, minor detail and how else could they have done that audibly?).

Lia hides her ever-frightening condition (starvation and cutting) from her Pulitzer Prize-winning professor father, his well-meaning new wife, her adorable younger stepsister, her brain surgeon cardiologist [corrected] mother, not to mention her ‘professional’ team. She’s already been locked up before, force fed, made fat, and she’s determined she’s never going through that again. Regardless of what should have been her support network, Lia thrills at the secretly decreasing numbers on the scale. As Lia disappears, Cassie’s ghostly presence becomes all too real …

Reading Wintergirls together with your teenage daughter is a jolting way to initiate a conversation. But sometimes, shock proves to be a great facilitator for communication … and the rewards well worth any and all discomfort.

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2009