By: Melissa Weir-Pina

Self-censorship is the act of taking control over what information someone can or can’t learn about. In a library setting it means that there are certain librarians who use their personal ideas to decide what books there can or can’t be in the library’s collection. This is especially common when children’s books are being chosen, specifically children’s books that cover sensitive topics, also known as topics that some librarians deem ‘too inappropriate’ for younger readers. These sensitive topics range from sexual orientations, divorce, racism, substance abuse, etcetera, and no matter how well these topics were handled in the books, or how well written the book is, or how the topics has been explained in a way that children can understand without their innocence being completely ruined, librarians still feel like children should not be reading these books. And why do librarians self-censor? Well, it can be for a multitude of different reasons, the librarians could be afraid of what people will say when they see those books in the library, it could be because of their own personal biases, or if the book is a children’s book, then the librarian could be worried about what sort of questions the children will ask after they read the book. There ae plenty of reasons as to why librarian self-censor, those are just some of the most common ones. There are also several questions around the topics of self-censorship, like does everyone self-censor? How does one recognize it? Should it be avoided? And if we should avoid it then how do we go about doing it? 

First off, does everyone self-censor? The short and straight answer is no, not everyone does it. It all depends on opinions; everyone has a different take on what information should or shouldn’t be known by the general public. The most common people who are guilty of self-censoring is parents, teachers, and librarians, and they are usually trying to keep certain pieces of knowledge from kids, as to why kids are usually the number one target of someone censoring something, it could be because people believe that a child’s innocence shouldn’t be ruined, or it could be because adults feel like children need to be a certain age to start learning about come topics, or it could be that adults just don’t want to go through the hassle of trying to explain complicated topics to kids in a simplified manner so kids can understand it. While there are librarians who do self-censor, there are also lots of librarians who are adamantly against self-censoring, librarians who want people of all ages to learn new things at the library and know that libraries are meant to be a place where people can go to learn about any topic under the sun. 

Second, how do you recognize self-censoring? If someone is trying to keep information from you with your consent, then that is self-censoring, that’s all self-censoring is, the act of withholding information without your knowledge or consent. If you are about to start reading a book about climate change and all of a sudden one of your parents takes to book from you and then makes up some sort of excuse for why you can’t read the book, then guess what, they are probably trying to keep you from learning new information and are self-censoring. If a book in your school library suddenly gets banned and when you ask why it was the teacher or principal or school librarian tells you the book was inappropriate, then what probably happened is a kid brought the book home, the parents probably didn’t approve of it, and the parents probably complained to the school about it, leading to the book being banned, and that is also an act of self-censorship. 

Thirdly, should self-censorship be avoided? This is something that depends on your opinion; Some people think that some people shouldn’t know certain topics, and then there are people who think that nobody has the right to decide what people can or can’t learn about. However, it should be known that the act of self-censorship is a direct violation of the Access to Information Act, an act that provides Canadian citizens, permanent residents or any person (or entity) present in Canada the legal right to obtain information, in any form, that is under the control of a government institution. So, at the very least, librarians, or schools, deciding to keep certain pieces information from the public, is a violation of a law, so that is something that should be taken into account if you’re considering trying to keep information away from someone. 

In conclusion, the act of self-censorship has a lot of factors to take into consideration, there isn’t only one way to look at it. Some people are self-censoring, and they don’t even realize it, while other people are fully aware of what self-censoring is and are completely against it. Like most controversial topics, there’s no clear answer on what to do about self-censorship, or on how to avoid self-censoring, especially since there are people who don’t know what self-censorship is. Personally, I don’t think self-censorship should be encouraged, everyone has the right to learn whatever they want and keeping information from people is dangerous and almost always comes back to bite you, no information should be kept from you without your knowledge or consent. 

Antell, K., Strothmann, M., & Downey, J. (2013). Self-Censorship in Selection of LGBT- Themed Materials. Retrieved March 30, 2020, from https://journals.ala.org/index.php/rusq/article/view/3458/3722 

Kimmel, S. C., & Hartsfield, D. E. (2019). “It Was … the Word ‘Scrotum* on the First Page”: Educators’ Perspectives of Controversial Literature. Retrieved March 30, 2020, from https://go-gale-com.eztest.ocls.ca/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=ko_acd_ac&id=GALE|A599185264&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=7b478f02 

Citizenship Canada. (2019, March 29). Access to information and privacy. Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/access-information-privacy.html 

By: Melissa Weir-Pina

Smelly Socks was written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko. The book was written for ages three to seven. The theme of the book is wearing clean clother versus dirty clothes, and how wearing clean clothes is much better.

The story is about a girl named Tina, she needs new socks so she goes to a store with her grandfather and there she finds a pair of red, green, and yellow striped socks that she loves, in fact, Tina loves her socks so much that she decides that she is never going to take them off. Naturally, after wearing the socks for more than a few days they become dirty and very smelly, Tina’s mother tries to convince Tina to let her wash the socks, but Tina refuses to take her socks off. At school, Tina’s classmates are getting tired of Tina wearing her smelly socks so they decide that something needs to be done about Tina’s socks, so they grab Tina, bring her to a river and wash her socks in the river, and from then on Tina realized that wearing clean socks was a lot better, and decided that she was going to wear clean socks from then on.

I think Smelly Socks is relevant to a child’s social development because the book is explaining why you shouldn’t be wearing smelly clothes all the time in public, the book so how something like smelly socks can make an environment unpleasant for the people around you, so kids can understand why they can’t just wear one thing all the time without it being cleaned. I also think that Smelly Socks can help with language development, because there are lots of moments in this book (and in a lot of Robert Munsch books) where a parent can encourage their child to pronounce words for them (usually an onomatopoeia). There also words in the book that have been written an exaggerated manner which tells the reader they supposed to pronounce the word in an exaggerated manner, and that is something. the child can get involved with as well.

Before reading the book I would ask the kids if they are familiar with Robert Munsch’s books because Robert Munsch is a fairly well known author, and Michael Martchenko’s illustrations are pretty recognizable as well. I think that even if the kids don’t know the author or illustrator by name, they will at the very least recognize Robert Munsch’s work. For an activity to do with kids after reading the book, they could colour in their own pairs of paper socks, they could use their imagination to design what they think a pair of socks that they would never want to take off would look like.

In conclusion, I think that Smelly Socks is a very good book that’s really fun to read to kids. It takes the simple idea of a girl not wearing socks and turns it into a story that is funny and entertaining for both the young child and the adult reading the book. It’s a very silly story with a simple moral, but most books for young children are like that and those are usually the best books to start young kids with because those simple morals will go a long way to helping children develop skills as they learn and start to interact with the world a little bit more every day.

By: Melissa Weir-Pina

The book I chose to review is Press Here by Herve Tullet, a book for 2-5 year-olds. The book has a fairly simple story- at the start of the book you have a single yellow dot, and as you go through the story, you are told to tap or rub the dot and shake or tilt the book. At each flip of a page, something about the dot will change, it could get bigger, it can change colour, or it can multiply. The book teaches young kids to follow instructions, it also teaches kids about sizes and colours.  

The concept of Press Here is following simple instructions, and having the young child reading the book interact with it. It’s a simple concept but it’s a good one for children to learn from an early age, because throughout life there will always be instructions or rules or laws to follow, whether it be rules set by a parent, instructions for an assignment you were given at school, or laws made by the government. The book has other concepts as well, colours for one, sometimes the reader is told to ‘tap the red dot’ so the child will have to tap that specific dot. The final concept the book has is about sizes, sometimes the reader will be told to tap a dot to make it bigger or smaller.  

The illustrations in the book are very simple- dots, at the start of the book you have one single yellow dot, and as you read to book you gain dots, you make them change size, or you can make them change colour. It doesn’t sound like the illustrations are anything special, but the colours they use for the dots are very bright, and the dots look like they’ve been painted on. The illustrations are very simple but the dots do pop out nicely against the white background in the book, making them noticeable enough the young kids will be intrigued by illustrations. 

Out of all the emergent literacy skills, I think the one that this book covers is print motivation. I think that this book encourages children to enjoy reading and to be interested in the book because this book encourages interacting with the book on every page, making it less likely that the young reader will lose interest in the book. I think this book also covers print awareness, each page has a different set of instructions on it for the young reader to follow, and the child will learn to recognize what each action in the book means, for example, when the child is told to tap something, they will know what to do immediately.  

In conclusion, I think that Press Here is a very enjoyable book for both young children and for adults. The book being very interactive means that there less chances that the child will lose interest in the book quickly, the illustrations really pop out at you and the book is an overall fun book to share with your kids. It’s a book with a simple and fun concept that encourages kids to play around with the book. It’s a book that never gets boring and one that can be read repeatedly without becoming a headache.