The Parental Blacklist: Books that got me in trouble and books that probably should have...

Read in the voice of parental astonishment!

Strange thoughts surface in the summer when I have time to think. The husband and I were talking about children's books that frightened us when we were kids, which led me to think about the books I read that upset my parents. In all fairness to them, I should provide some context. My parents -- indeed, my whole family -- were incredibly supportive about my love of books. My grandparents, aunts, and uncles all read to me and helped fill my bookshelves and my parents took me to the library every week. When I was too sick to go, my stepdad would go in my place (although I got really mad at him for bringing me The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, apparently). When I managed to earn some money, my dad would patiently take me to Adam's - a local used bookstore where I could spend $10 and come out with an entire shopping bag full of random and wonderful titles. But every once in awhile I got into a book that set off parental alarm bells...

I didn't get in trouble over Fellowship because of its content. I got caught placing it inside my larger school books and reading it in class (whoops). The teacher did punish me, but admitted to my parents that I seemed to be able to keep my place in both works when called on, so how mad could she be?

When I was in grade school it turned out that my bus driver was my cousin's grandmother (welcome to the Ohio Valley) and she and I became friends. One night I got permission to visit her house. I thought it was so cool -- she had a Chow-Chow and a husky and they ate spaghetti off of plates while we were eating spaghetti! She also had tons of books and she sent me home with Follow the River... which opens with a particularly gory passage about an Indian attack. My parents were not pleased - though, by the time they confiscated the book, I'd already gotten past that part...

In the case of Conan it was my aunt that intervened and objected to my reading about scantily clad women being rescued by the hulking barbarian. She was probably right (my best friend and I did put the Barbie dolls in a slave caravan once...) but, as a young reader, I didn't know what all the fuss was about -- and I was far more interested in sword battles than the damsels freed by them.







I totally deserved to get in trouble over this one. There's an orgy scene in this particular book of ElfQuest (elves having a somewhat different grasp of sexuality than we humans) and I much too young for such things. But, again, I was so young that I didn't quite get what the fuss was about. They were elves and the elves who loved each other even stayed in pairs in the midst of the orgy... and isn't love a good thing? I don't know if that's quite the argument I made to my parents, but they let me keep my book on the condition that I didn't share it with any other youngsters! This made me feel special and grown up, like I was mature enough to handle "forbidden" topics. My parents were pretty cool!

The opening panel of "the orgy scene"

The latest ElfQuest cover - repeating some of the imagery above!

For a lifetime of reading, it's a small list, but the books below gave me pause - even if I didn't get in any trouble over them!

Remember the Scholastic book fair? I loved that thing and I labored for weeks over the selections (because, as remains true, there is never enough money for all the books I need in my life). At one of those fairs I acquired Ghosts Beneath Our Feet. Huge mistake. My bed faced a dresser with a mirror and I was convinced that the lady on the cover was going to escape and strangle me in my sleep. Worse, the book concerns a cave-in in a mine. My pap was a miner and even though he'd been retired for years by the time I read this book, I thought a cave-in would get him somehow. Sometimes books with pink covers cannot be trusted...

... to say nothing of books with horses on them. I was horse crazy as a kid (like most girls) and I was even fortunate enough to take riding lessons for several years. I read this book long before real horses came into my life and the screams of the dying horses terrified me. The only scene on par with my memory of this (which is probably out of proportion anyway) is the scene with the frozen horses in Malaparte's Kaputt. Brrr...

I was also too young for Pike's vampiress, Sita, even though she helped inspire my main character. There's a lot of blood and gore in this series, and a ton of pathos. I flinched, I cried, and I got grossed out - but I went back to the library for the next five books...

This book still terrifies me -- I think that's part of it's function -- but it terrified me a lot more when my grandmother gave it to me to read. My grandmother was a reader in the truest sense and she always wanted to see me get published. "Write a normal book," she'd encourage me. "You know, like the ones I like!" The books she liked were all about murders, so I never figured out the normal part...

This book only scared me when I looked up the word "erotica" (prominently written on its cover) and realized that I'd been reading it in front of my dad! Today I would probably crack up at the content, but it all felt very risque at the time... and, you know, flying lion!

 If I remember right, sex is a large part of this one, too, and I read it around the same time as High Couch. I suspect it would seem tame in a world of Fifty Shades of Gray (gag me with a spoon)! In case you haven't noticed, I'm miffed about the proliferation of erotica. I'm fine with people reading it, writing it, whatever, but I wish there was a way to filter it out of my Amazon search. When I'm looking for books about Siberian tigers for my research, I too often find self-published shapeshifter romances that I don't need in my life... uggh.

And, finally, not just sex -- but sex between men! What is the world coming to? Armand inspired another of my characters and made me interested in opera, so I'm glad no one took this one off of me!