Argument Essay

Every year we teens complain about banning of books. It’s ever harder to find a good book to read. Sometimes books are banned because of small details. We should have the right to read any books we want. If we are comfortable reading about the topic, we should be able to do it. We are almost adults and some topics we will have to learn about someday. Why not now?

The people who are stopping us from reading banned books are parents, teachers, and counselors. Were the books written for them? I don’t think so. For example, in the article “Darkness Too Visible” it is stated by Amy Freeman “‘nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilations, this dark, dark stuff.’” If her daughter is not reading about real life issues, what would she be reading about? Fairy’s and dwarfs?  Things that are not really reality. Teens will face challenging subjects in life, hear and learn about them one day anyway.

When you walk down the street, or sit on a bench outside, you hear so many different conversations. “I just broke up with my boyfriend” or “ugh I hate my life, I just wish I could just end it.” Everywhere you go, you hear things like that, and you don’t just read about them in books. It is reality.  For example, in “Darkness Too Visible” it states “… relates the delirium of a traumatized youth who witnessed his parents murder, and it does not have a happy ending.” This quote made me a little puzzled. Most happy endings aren’t reality.  Life is not always about being happy and teens have to know that. If they are reading just about happy endings, they will think that that’s what life is.  However, if they read about suicide, or a person who gets bad grades once in a while, they will realize that they are not the only ones to whom bad things occasionally happen. Nobody is perfect.

In conclusion, reading makes teens feel warm inside. If we don’t have a topic that we like to read, we wouldn’t like reading. Banning a book is one less book that one teen would love to read.  If an author has a write to write about a topic then teens have a right to read it. If all the books are banned that are about serious real life topics, then we are left with only fairytales, perfect popular kid books. Topics that aren’t reality.  We are almost adults and these books will help us get more to that goal.