Why Perks of Being a Wallflower Shouldn't Be Banned

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Dear whomever this may concern, I’ve recently discovered that one of my favorite books, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is banned in several states including Illinois, and it is listed in the TOP 100 most challenged and banned books in the United States. Claims say that it is ranked there because of sexual content, drug use, and mild violence and touches on suicide, self-harm, masturbation, and domestic abuse in relationships. In my opinion, people should stop banning books as a result of sexual content, because if kids aren’t reading it at that age, they’ll just read it, or see it, or do it somewhere else eventually. Sheltering kids from everything you think is a “sin” or “uncalled for” or “just inappropriate” is absurd, because then, they’ll just find it somewhere else. Sex is the reason we’re here, so we should at least teach our kids about it to keep them informed or, at the very least, let them read a little bit about it. I think that by 7th or 8th grade, most kids are ready to read this novel. Times are changing, people. The same goes for drug use, everyone is either hearing about it, talking about it or doing it, and so, we should not keep our kids in the shade of ignorance. They should at least know what these things are, and the book does NOT advocate drug use, it only touches upon it a couple of times, with references to marijuana and lysergic acid diethylamide (street names are LSD, or acid) one in which he says “I decided to never take LSD again.” A statement, which is, in fact, promoting anti-drug use, and we’re all pretty sure that’s what our government and school boards want (Red Ribbon Week, what a joke). The mild violence in the book is just mentioning a past fight and one actual fight scene, and today’s kids see that in person at least once a week at school. Look back at the facts, violence is all around us. Our world is full of

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