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.
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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.
I am not pro censorship but young people are susceptible to all sorts of tjings. I read Lolita at 13 and I am not sure it evoked the disgust it should have. The attraction sorry to say seemed so normal yet thrilling . The fact that it was from the perps point of view and I wasn’t old enough to understand the wrong ness because tge issue was never discussed in my Catholic school. I would prefer to warn my child, explain legal age as part of sex ed than read random things at12. I actually was a voracious reader and just read a lot of inappropriate stuff too early. Esp racy 70s 80s stuff.
Literature should be uncensored – but I dont think mere children are allowed to have access to this in depth fan fiction.
I’m sure this book has some key take aways but in the end of the day its some freakshows kink.
**If you want to change society you cant be lazy and hope for the best**. You cant just toss this into a library and hope that 7th grader wont develop some weird complex and instead “ThInK oF tHe bIgGer pIcTure”
You change society it with proper parenthood and education. You cant just toss a book in there and think you’ve changed the world.
Honestly some books that are dark but are meant to raise awareness and get extremely popular should have educator’s versions, and in these editions they cut back on too many mature themes and make the most important theme more clear for the student audience. Boy Toy is important and it should be presented to students in some way, considering it’s there to raise awareness on an issue they could go through, but the message could certainly go over some heads. Teachers may also want you to read these books so you can identify when you may be facing abuse yourself, which is why teachers and librarians wish to put these books in libraries in the first place. Students may also request books sometimes, so many a student thought it would be important. Idk, it’s easy to just ban all the “bad” books rather than actually explain to your child what’s going on or actually read it yourself. It’s also easy to just put anything in a library without looking too much into it, and some themes expressed in the book may not match the description too much. I haven’t read this book myself, so I’m not going to say these are how I feel about the book specifically, just how I feel about more mature books like this in general.