#bookban

Every month, I share one of my favorite books with you! This month is probably the most influential book on my life - Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz, illustrations by Stephen Gammell.  These books made me want to write, to draw, to tell ghost stories. We would put on plays of stories from these books in the front yard for the neighbors. If you did just-okay, you could use the 25 cent admission to buy everyone a Flintstones Push Pop. If you did really well, everyone could get a pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream or a calzone from Angelo's Pizza. Putting on those plays made us eventually make low budget horror films as adults and shaped so many good times and important friendships that make up some of the best times of my life. 

These books not only show diverse folklore from around the world, and do so in a super digestible way, but the drawings by Gammell will change your life. I think, at least speaking for us Satanic Panic pressure cooked Millennials, something magical reached through the empty eye sockets of the charcoal drawings and rooted itself in our DNA. The  positive impact these books had on me is a good example of why we should fight book bans, and let our kids explore safe but scary (or queer or feminist, etc) subject matters so we can become fully realized and creative adults. I have so much gratitude for these books and what they've done for me 

Book banning: the favorite hobby of control freaks and scaredy-cats who think the world’s too raw, too real, too alive for their delicate sensibilities. They want to scrub out the classics—the messy, bloody, beautifully weird books that actually tell us something about life, death, love, and apocalypse. Spoiler: banning them doesn’t erase their power. It just makes you look scared as hell.

Take Charles Dickens. Dude throws ghosts at you like Halloween’s never-ending party, with endings that do a chaotic dance between redemption and “holy crap, what just happened?” Banning Dickens because of ghosts? Might as well ban electricity because you might get shocked. Spoiler alert: life’s a shock.

Then there’s Sleepy Hollow—a story with a headless horseman slicing through the night like your worst nightmare on steroids. “Too bloody for kids!” Yeah, well, life isn’t a Disney Channel special, sweetie. Fairy tales used to be grim, gritty warnings, not sanitized bedtime lullabies.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? The science that bent time, space, and your brain? Yeah, it ruffled some feathers because it refuses to bow to literal Bible readings. But without it, no GPS, no nukes, no cosmic mind trips. Trying to ban that? It’s like closing your eyes and yelling, “I don’t see the problem!” Spoiler: the universe doesn’t care.

The Hardy Boys — those teenage mystery solvers with the kind of bromance that raises eyebrows. Read the series again; you’ll see the subtext hanging there like a neon sign. Scared of a little homoerotic tension in a boys’ club? Maybe it’s time to check your closet—or your assumptions.

Now, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — where a computer builds a computer to find the meaning of life (spoiler: it’s 42), dolphins outsmart humans, mice run cosmic experiments, and a religion based on sneezing somehow makes sense. It’s chaos wrapped in cosmic sarcasm, and yes, it will poke holes in your neat little worldview. Ban it? Only if you’re afraid the universe might laugh at you.

Edgar Allan Poe was the OG nightmare fuel. Tales so dark they offend both the pious Pentecostals and snake charmers alike. Trying to silence Poe is like trying to cage a raven—he’ll just fly back with a scream and a shadow.

The Grapes of Wrath gets a bad rap from the folks who prefer musicals over misery. But Steinbeck’s brutal honesty about human suffering and injustice punches harder than any feel-good show tune. Deny it all you want, but real pain doesn’t vanish with a catchy chorus.

Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Kid-baking ovens, murderous stepmothers, and no happily-ever-afters to sugarcoat the misery. These stories weren’t meant to soothe; they were meant to scare you straight. Banning them is rewriting childhood as a Hallmark movie—and nobody’s buying that.

And finally, the Holy Bible—an epic anthology stuffed with miracles, massacres, love, wrath, and apocalypse. It’s terrified children and comforted millions across millennia. Pick your edition, but all versions will give you the creeps and the hope.

Ban these books, and you don’t just silence stories—you silence thinking. You cage the wild, messy, beautiful storm that is storytelling. You say, “Sorry, reality is too complicated for you.”