I Read a Banned Book for Banned Books Week 2024

What’s in those banned books? Why don’t they want us to read them? What information are they trying to keep from us? In celebration of Banned Books Week 2024, I read a banned book. In this post, I’ll share what I found inside and just how scandalous—or not—it was.

Statistics on Banned Books from the ALA

According to the American Library Association (ALA), “The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by OIF [ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom] in more than 20 years of tracking: 4,240 unique book titles were targeted for removal from schools and libraries.”

The ALA produced an alarming line graph to illustrate the sharp uptick of book bans since 2021 and made it available for download and sharing. View it and weep:

Censorship is trending upwards because small numbers of people have been demanding book banning that affects everyone’s access to information.

I Read a Banned Book: Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

The novel Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison, was the #2 most challenged book in the United States in 2021. According to the ALA, it has been banned and challenged for LGBTQ+ content and because it was claimed to be sexually explicit.

I found Lawn Boy to be unique in its frankness and straight talk. The narrator is a 22-year-old man named Mike with a passion for landscaping and topiary. He struggles as he seeks dignifying work, satisfying friendships, romantic love, stability at home, enough money to get by, and life purpose.

Mike doesn’t take crap from people. He sees it everywhere, and he protests against it. This tendency causes him to lose jobs but also get new jobs, and to cause interpersonal ruptures but also make new interpersonal connections. He is lovable in his willingness to give honest opinions and shake up the status quo. He is crass, but levelheaded.

Examples of his crassness: He admits at one point that he is “shit-housed.” At another point, he describes his mom’s tenant like this: “You could see one of his nuts poking out the leg of his jeans shorts, along with the inside pocket liner.”

An example of his levelheadedness is when he mounts an impassioned defense of his mom’s smoking habit:

“More often than not, I know when, and why, I’m making a bad decision. Most of us do—and by us, I mean broke people. Take smoking, for example. If Mom didn’t smoke away ten bucks a day, we never would’ve had to rent out the guest cottage [this is what they call the shed next to their trailer home] to Freddy in the first place, right? Mom knows that, she’s done the math a million times. But there’s more to consider. For starters, she’s perpetually tired. She’s been working fifty-hour shifts for as long as I can remember. And there’s a good chance she’s clinically depressed. Smoking gets her through that second shift. It relaxes her when the pressure is mounting. It gives her something to look forward to . . . At ten bucks a day, that’s a bargain.”

Lawn Boy has real things to say about protecting the voices of the lower classes. So many books are written from the perspective of well-off people. It was refreshing to read a book from a new perspective.

I Read a Banned Book. But Why Was Lawn Boy Challenged and Banned?

There is more controversial content in this book than a bit of unrefined, so to speak, language.

• There’s one instance of casual, heterosexual sex.
• There’s one instance of homosexual sex as part of a relationship.
• There’s one instance, mentioned multiple times throughout the book, of two elementary-school-age boys engaging in (seemingly consensual) sexual acts on one occasion.
• There are multiple instances of defending the rights of the poor, people identifying as LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, immigrants, Spanish speakers, Native Americans, Blacks, people of mixed race, and others.

As The Washington Post reported, there has been some confusion about whether the book depicts sex acts between two boys or a man and a boy. There may also have been confusion because there is a children’s book with the same title.

I Read a Banned Book. What Do I Think About the Appropriateness of Lawn Boy?

There is no pedophilia in this book. There’s a description of two children (boys) engaging in sexual acts, unbeknownst to adults. Admittedly, while reading, it took me a while to puzzle out whether it’s a boy and a man or two boys, but anyone can tell after a careful reading that it’s two boys.

This is not a children’s book. In the publishing industry, there used to be a category called “new adult.” I’m not sure if that term is still used in publishing, but this book would fall into that category. New adult books are for and about the experience of being 18-25 years old. You’ve come off the high of being a high school senior, on top of the world, and landed in an adult reality where the government trusts you to drive, vote, fight for your country, and get an apartment, but not drink (at least for a few years). At your job, everyone tells you you’re doing everything wrong because you’re so young and inexperienced, but no one has time to train you. You’re learning how to navigate living independently. If you go to college, you’re thrust into a new world of challenges. And in the midst of all this, you have to make major decisions, like what to study or do for a living and whom to date or marry, that will affect the course of the rest of your life.

Lawn Boy is a wonderful book for new adults. I don’t see a problem with adults reading about real-life topics that are highly relatable to their lives. I think it’s only a good thing.

One mom said, “Who normalizes sex acts between fourth-graders?” Lawn Boy does not normalize sex acts among children if “normalize” means encourage. The narrator, Mike, grapples with his memory, tries to understand what it means, and thinks about what was, or was not, okay about it. On the other hand, Lawn Boy does normalize the fact that some people have sexual experiences at a young age, and lots of new adults are left with difficult memories that they then try to process. This is one of the many facts of life that the book makes the reader think about.

The book also normalizes defending the rights of the poor, people identifying as LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and so on. This is unfortunately controversial in the U.S., but it really should be a no-brainer: of course we should normalize kindness, understanding, and acceptance.

I Read a Banned Book. My Verdict on Lawn Boy

This book should be available in public libraries.

Many high schoolers are ready to read about adult topics (some are in fact adults), and adult books should be available to them, as well. It’s common and healthy for people of all ages to read about characters slightly older than them, so they can learn about what’s coming up next. (I speak as a former high school English teacher with a master’s degree in education.)

This book is not appropriate for middle grade or elementary school students; but I don’t know of anyone who says it should be in middle or primary school libraries.

Read a Banned Book for Banned Books Week 2024

Here’s information about the top 10 most challenged books of 2023 (which is the most recent data available):

Why not get one of these books, read it, and decide for yourself what you think? If you do, let me know! I always love hearing your opinions about books!

Have you ever read a banned book?