"The Perks of Being A Wallflower" teaches many important lessons using mature scenarios. School libraries and teachers are trying to remove "The Perks Of Being Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, from their selection of books, and in my opinion it shouldn't be removed just because of mature and non traditional themes and issues.
Many parents, who are uncomfortable with mature themes in Young Adult novels, are trying to censor the books that their kids are reading. Diana Verm a 10th grader in Conroe, Texas, was assigned “Fahrenheit 451” by her English teacher. She began reading it but stopped after a few pages because she felt that there was too much “cussing and then the burning of the bible.” Diana Verm told this to her father, Alton Verm, and he worked on pushing administrators to ban “Fahrenheit 451” from school libraries. Amy Freeman, a mother of three, gave her opinion on Young Adult literature in the article “Darkness Too Visible” by Meghan Cox Gurdon. She went to her local bookstore and found that there was “nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving to my daughter. It was all vampires, suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff.” The same article also said that these books contained “hideously distorted portrayals of what life is,” but I’d have to disagree. “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower” contains similar issues to books in the article, but the portrayal is completely realistic, it isn’t an over-exaggerated version of an issue a person might experience in real life.
The idea of censoring books is only going to make children read them more. When books are banned it is going to create a higher profile for that book. In the article “The Banned Books We Have Loved” by Jen Doll, Rita Meade, a librarian, is quoted “I honestly don’t think that banning a book ruins its reputation or makes children afraid to read it. If anything, the opposite will happen.” I completely agree with Meade, being a student myself, if a book were banned that would only make me want to read it more, to see why it had been banned in the first place. Later in the article, Meade adds that “a book being added to a censored list simply means she’ll only fight harder to get it into the hands of kids because it means the book has an important message along with being just entertaining.” I think that Rita Meade made a valid point, these books are being banned because people don’t think that the message is being relayed through appropriate scenarios. In my opinion, if it relays an important message, why would you keep your kids from it? An example of this is in “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” is when Charlie takes LSD, and he doesn’t have the greatest experience. He doesn’t remember much of what happened the night before, but he does make it clear that he will “never take LSD again.” (page 100) This teaches kids the bad side effects of drugs through a mature scenario, but it does put across the message that drugs are bad.
There is a need for children to learn about the important themes that they are being shielded from, like sex and drugs. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” is written about so many valuable themes, and if it were banned, how would children learn about them? Towards the beginning of the book, Charlie flashes back to when his brother threw a huge party while their parents were in Ohio. Charlie was told to stay in his room and he did, but at one point during the night a couple came in asking if they could use his room. Charlie just sat there trying to ignore the fact that the boy was basically raping his “girlfriend”. It was all very innocent seeming, when Charlie’s sister came in his room to check on him, she found the couple on his bed and asked Charlie “Why didn’t you stop them?” Charlie responded with, “I didn’t know what they were doing,” (page 31). Charlie learned about how rape can happen when you don’t even realize it. If “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” was banned, then children wouldn’t be able to learn any of the lessons that Charlie learned, including the one in this section of the book.
In conclusion, these books have too many valuable lessons to be banned from school libraries. It’s hard to learn about rape or sexual abuse if you haven’t experienced it in your own life, so how else do you learn about it? An extremely graphic movie? Books seem to be the best way to teach children about new and mature topics. Some of the scenarios can be graphic, so maybe kids should check with their parents before they read the book. That way they will still have the option of reading it.
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