Speak loudly

I wasn't planning to post today, since I have actual paying work to do (yay!). But I had to draw your attention to this. Many of you will already know about it, as it was all over the twitterverse and blogosphere yesterday, but some of you may not.

 A crazy book-banning types named Wesley Scroggins (yes, really) has written an article in which he talks about SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson. Now, I love LHA. LOVE HER. I wrote about that love here. SPEAK is one of my top ten YA books of all time. And this Scroggins chap calls it 'filth'. He thinks that high school students should not be exposed to such books. He even goes to far as to equate rape with pornograpy, which is so twisted I can't even begin to get my head around it. Please read Laurie's blog post about it all here.

People like this man really, really scare me. He's a professor, for crying out loud. A supposedly educated man! I've no idea what he kind of books he'd like to see young people read, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to find out. We can't let this book-banning madness win. We just can't.

So, please go and find out more on the blogosphere. There are some pretty inspiring posts out there. Try this one for starters. If you haven't already, please read SPEAK. And if you happen to be a school librarian, please please please make sure there is a copy of SPEAK on your shelves. A student of yours might need to read it - if only to know that they're not alone.