Should High School Books Be Allowed In Schools

Young adult females often have a particularly difficult time finding positive role models that teach an appropriate transition from adolescence to adulthood. Between commercials, magazines, and movies pressuring girls to obtain impossible physical perfection, societal and school pressures, as well as body image and sexuality has become a key concern for young adult females. Fortunately, there are many young adult books that address these issues without reminding teens of a pamphlet in the guidance counselor’s office. Two different books, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson address a variety of issues important to young adult girls and are ideal books to integrate into schools. Although Beauty Queens may not be a boy’s top literary pick, it is a riveting, rebellious book that screams “girl power.” If a high school offered a women’s or gender studies class, this novel would be perfectly suited. Even for the typical English classroom, this should definitely be a book in the school library or on the classroom bookshelf. Although female targeted, I believe that this would still be a good novel to integrate into classrooms …show more content…
For example, Judy Blume’s novel Forever (1975) has been frequently criticized and censored for its graphic portrayals of a teenage girl exploring intercourse for the first time. The article “Reconsidering Judy Blume’s Forever,” explains that the book remains popular because teens can “find themselves truthfully presented, undistorted, not in extremis—just ordinary life and its awful emotions,” (Gough, 1985). Although this “moving story of the end of innocence” focuses on the character’s loss of her virginity and her discovery of sexual power and pleasure, imbedded in the text is the underlying theme of weight and body image obsession (Younger,