I read this in junior high and this book is one of the many reasons I think children should not be censored. Boy Toy by Barry Lyga would absolutely be removed from school libraries today if people took the time to read it or know what it was about, which is scary. The novel tells of a 12 year old who enters a “consensual” relationship with his teacher and it takes you on a journey of how this affects his psyche and his life.
This book had a profound impact on me as a child and stuck with me 20 years later. I believe that children should have access to literature that can protect them or that they can relate to. Adults can not always prepare them for or protect them from everything that they may encounter in life and they should have access to safe spaces. Literature is a safe space. Literature should be uncensored.
This is just my take, but I highly recommend this book because it covers a very controversial topic. I’ve heard so many people say that boys being with older women is an accomplishment. There is something fundamentally wrong with our society and the only way to correct our way of thinking is to open our minds and understand a different point of view from the perspective of victims. This may be a work of fiction, but there are so many true stories out there that are incredibly similar. This is not an easy read, but it is phenomenal.
by ChaoticMenagerie
2 Comments
Woo! Go OP! Fuck censorship!
Access to information is fundamental in empowering a population, which is why, if I had to guess, it is such a problem to those who want to maintain the arbitrary hierarchies that crumble when effectively questioned. It’s the same reason why the Catholic Church wanted to keep mass in Latin and why the printing press facilitated a mass exodus from their subjugation-by-fear-of-eternal-hellfire.