JOHN SLEEZER/The Kansas City Star Blue Valley North High School student Sasha Mushegian thinks books such as All The Pretty Horses should stay on reading lists.

I love books.

As an awkward, shy child, I read constantly for entertainment and education. As I've been growing up, dealing with the awkwardness that is part of being a teenager, books have inspired me, enlightened me and made me giddy with the joy of getting into someone else's head. They have opened my eyes to problems in human nature and society, and stretched my brain with radically different points of view on life.

Every book I have read has taught me something, even if it was just, “This is what really bad writing sounds like.” I am fiercely passionate about books I like, and I react to an insult to a good book the way I would to someone picking on my little brother.

You can imagine my reaction then, when a group of Blue Valley School District parents petitioned the school board to remove 14 books from the required reading curriculum. Among the books on their hit list, three are in my upper echelon of favorite books of all time, and four more are ones I respect and admire. The rest either are just not my personal cup of tea, or ones I haven't read.

What I'd been thinking about books like All the Pretty Horses and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was not that they were vulgar, immoral and inappropriate for people my age. Rather, I was thinking about how honest, how heart-rending, and how inventive and utterly different they were from anything I'd ever read before. Regardless of whether or not the speech, actions or thoughts of the characters were role-model behaviors, these books made me think. I'm deeply offended at the idea that anyone could become a worse person from reading them.

The parents (Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools) are charging the disputed books with not meeting district policy 4600A's requirement that required books be free of “vulgar language, sexual explicitness, or violent imagery that is gratuitously employed.” The argument really comes down to what is “gratuitous” and what is not, since we can agree that the works of everyone from Shakespeare on contained at least some of those aspects. (“I bite my thumb at you,” anyone?)

“Gratuitous” is defined as “unnecessary” or “unwarranted.” Both are subjective terms. However, I have enough faith in the professionalism and expertise of my English teachers — people who have devoted their lives to instilling an appreciation of literature into students — to trust them to choose books from authors who have enough pride in their work not to use sex, violence or vulgarity purely for shock value.

And sex, violence and vulgarity in and of themselves are not a reason to remove a book from the curriculum. All good books somehow are based on reality, and reality often is ugly. The way to work toward a less ugly future, with less promiscuity and less vulgar language, is not to deny that promiscuity and vulgar language ever existed, but to acknowledge it, honestly discuss it, look at it in the context of a quality piece of literature. In the end, that's what matters — whether the story is engaging, the prose well crafted and innovative, and most importantly, whether the author has something to say.

These ideas are discussed in a controlled, analytical, academic setting where students are steered away from egregious misinterpretation. Students examine the books as scholars, comparing them to other works, to experience and to current events. As long as teachers are responsible, students are safe.

It's true that some words and ideas should not be introduced to students who have not reached a certain level of maturity. But the amount of sheltering these parents are trying to accomplish is more appropriate for elementary school children than for people capable of earning wages, taking college-level courses and driving cars. These are all actions that require a degree of personal responsibility and capability of rational thought that these parents seem to think we lack.

Yes, we're not completely mature yet; sure, we often make bad decisions — but maturation is a process. There's no magical age at which we mentally and emotionally become adults.

How can you expect children to mature if you don't expose them to books in which reality is messy and confusing, morals are not immediately clear, making the right decision requires analysis of subtleties, and characters make the wrong choices? How do you expect students to think for themselves if you never expose them to situations that are challenging and unfamiliar (yet still safely contained within the pages of a great work of literature)?

I doubt that the teenagers having promiscuous sex and using drugs are doing so because they read too much and have come across Chris Crutcher and Kate Chopin.

We learn and make judgments about things by gathering information and thoughts from many sources. The way to make sure students grow up moral and responsible is to have them read as wide a spectrum of ideas as possible, not a narrow range of themes. From the group's Web site, one would think my English class is feeding me a steady stream of curse words and nihilism. This is far from the truth. My class has read The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, A Farewell to Arms, The Awakening, and in the future will tackle One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. All of these books represent different ways of looking at the world.

Of the books that parents suggest are “better choices” for us, the majority were written before 1900, and it's hard to find any written after 1950. I'm not denying that there are some truly excellent books that are not being taught, but I disagree with the idea that these books somehow are more moral because they don't contain the f-word.

The only reason Moby Dick doesn't contain the f-word is because back then, people said “swounds” instead. It's unfair to condemn a book on the grounds that its content is too familiar, or hits too close to home.

Parents do have the option of receiving an alternative reading assignment for their student if they feel a book would be inappropriate for their child to read. What they should not be doing is limiting the scope of other students' educations.

There is immeasurable value in group discussions and essay writing. Students should have the opportunity to have these experiences with some of the most controversial and challenging, yet important and thought-provoking, works of literature of our time.

I just about started crying when I read the indictment of All the Pretty Horses. It seemed to me narrow-minded to ignore the tragic beauty of this coming-of-age story, to refuse to think about the questions it raises about modernity, to disregard Cormac McCarthy's original use of language, focusing instead on the character's cursing, having sex and fighting.

I would have loved to discuss and ponder the themes of this award-winning novel with a diverse group of peers, some of whom may hate the book, and some of whom might interpret it completely differently from me. If the parents get their way, though, I might not get this opportunity, and students who would not otherwise pick up these books will miss out on some of the most enriching academic experiences of their lives.

Sasha Mushegian, 15, is a junior

at Blue Valley North High School. To reach her, send e-mail to

teenstar@kcstar.com.