Earlier this year, a small group of friends and I decided we wanted to read some banned books. I suggested the most banned books across the United States: Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.
According to Pen America, this novel is one of 19 that has been banned in 50 or more school districts with the following four books being the next most frequently banned:
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Sold by Patricia McCormick
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Nineteen Minutes, in fact, was banned 98 times in the 2023-2024 school year. Looking for Alaska was banned 97 times. More than 80% of all book bans (not just the titles I've noted) appear to come from Iowa and Florida. Texas and Utah also came up regularly in the articles I read for this post.
In the case of Picoult's book, nearly every ban is focused on a single page and a single depiction of date rape. They are not at all focused on the fact that the book is about a school shooting in which ten students die and many more are injured. Nor are they focused on the fact that the entire novel centers on a student having been brutally bullied his entire life.
Think about that. ONE PAGE depicting a teenage girl being date raped is the reason for objections to this very long novel. The edition of the novel I read was published in 2013 and is 656 pages long.
ONE PAGE is the focus of nearly every ban of this book.
A violent video game and description of human characters in the game being slaughtered in a school shooting was not the cause of objection.A student being mercilessly bullied--even having his pants and underwear pulled down in a school cafeteria and numerous students seeing his penis, which Picoult describes--was not the subject of the objections.Cold and calculated planning of a school shooting by one student was not the reason for objections.Blood, injuries, and death of multiple students did not merit all of these objections.A heavily implied suicide by one character and an explicitly stated plan by another character was not the subject of all of these objections.
Instead, it comes down to one page depicting a date rape that is not nearly as graphically described as the penis of the boy who is subjected to bullying.
As with pretty much all book bans, I have to wonder how many of those proposing or supporting such bans have actually read the material to which they object.
I want to encourage you to pick up and read Nineteen Minutes or one of the numerous other books regularly facing bans.
Picoult's book was long, but it was engaging and I saw myself, at various points, in many of the characters--the parents, the popular girl who felt like an imposter, the teachers trying do right by their students, the boy who was bullied until he couldn't take it anymore. I found myself identifying in some way with most of the characters except for the group of bullies.
There were parts of the novel that were hard to read due to how emotionally raw and painful they felt, but this was an extremely well written and thorough depiction of modern high school and modern teenage life. It carefully wove together the complicated relationships of students, parens, and community members amid a tragedy, the events leading up to it, and the aftermath. It also laid bare some of the most difficult aspects of being a parent and how parents never truly know their children's deepest thoughts and feelings--even if we experienced similar situations in our own youthful years.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult is a moving, but dark novel with a compelling story to tell. I hope you will read it and report back with your thoughts afterwards.
You can purchase a copy of the book through Bookshop.org HERE.
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