Weetzie Bat and the Censorship challenge

Francesca Lia Block wrote her novel Weetzie Bat with a storyline of an urban fairy tale, but her teen main characters encounter obstacles that are very real that other young adults must often confront as well.
Weetzie only has vague memories of a conventional family life (she reflects on it the beginning of the novel), and yet she tries her best to create an avant-garde family that can withstand the daily challenges that life throws at them. Despite the use of witty names, lively language and the magical setting, Block explores a number of difficult issues, including addiction, divorce, AIDs (and STDs), feelings of abandonment, and death in this realistic fairy tale.  However, Weetzie and her friends face these challenges with the enduring courageousness of fairy tale heroes and fight for their happy ending.

Based on the class discussion about the book and reading other internet sources, this is either a book that you love or you hate. I think that it is a fun book that many young adults might enjoy. The storyline reminds me of telling stories with my closest friends – when someone inevitably omits an important part of the story at the beginning and so some later parts of the story seem so random without that detail (okay, I am really bad for this!). I also have a *weird* way of thinking sometimes, so that may be another reason why I like the random weirdness of Weetzie Bat. I like how the author addresses many serious issues without ‘slapping the reader in the face’ with them. They are just incorporated into the story and the protagonists are able to move beyond the obstacles to discover happiness.  I would recommend this book to teens who are looking for a non-traditional book or if they really enjoy creative writing. It might also be a good choice if I knew that they were experiencing some similiar difficulties as those addressed in the book.

This book is under the category for censorship challenge this week. According to the ALA, there are four main reasons that books for young adults are censored:

·         Family Values

·         Religion

·         Political Views

·         Minority Rights

I can see why some of the issues may have been more sensitive when the book was first published in 1989, but I don’t think that it should be censored anymore as it is something that should be protected now under the first amendment in the United States and the Charter of Rights and Freedom in Canada.