Let the books fight it out in the marketplace of ideas. Young people are not that fragile.
“Young people are not that fragile”
Isn’t that the truth-and leave it up to parents-if I hadn’t wanted my kid reading a book she got at the library, I’d just have taken it from her, just as my parents did, until about the age of 14 when I could make my own reading decisions.
That did not, however keep me from taking Peyton Place from my schoolteacher mom’s nightstand drawer in the hour between when I got home from school and when she did-or when she and my dad were out for the evening and the sitter was watching TV. I was 9 or 10, and careless with my bookmarker, and got busted-my mom asked me very casually if I understood what I had read, and I said not really, and she told me if I didn’t understand it I had no business reading it. I was shamed into not taking out the book again-but a few months later, I helped myself to Tropic of Cancer when she was reading it, and after that another detailed adult novel about some Italian businessman who was a womanizer...
I don’t think I’ve been emotionally scarred or anything like that by my exposure to adult-themed books at an inappropriate age...