"But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things."-Chbosky

Perks of Being a Wallflower was an amazing read. When I first started, I was understandably skeptical. I loved the letter format that the author chose to use, but the content was very strange at first. Once I became more invested in the characters, I actually enjoyed the content more.  These characters were so real to me and the main character Charlie was so interesting, I just wanted to figure him out.  Even when the big twist came, I wasn't ready for it. After reading the book I am really looking forward to seeing the movie because I want to see how it compares. I'll do a follow-up post once I see it, but for now I want to consider the teaching application of this novel.

As you can see, banned book week is fast upon us, and not surprisingly, Perks is on the list for the top censored or banned books in the US. When I started reading this book, the controversial content was all I could think about.  I was like, how in the world would I teach this book in a class?? Could I just teach excerpts? Would that work? What if I got in trouble? I guess I would have to have a really good reason for teaching this book, but I do have a good reason. This book is incredible, I wish someone would have made me read it in high school.  Poor Charlie goes though so many of the same feelings that I had in middle school and high school. I had sever anxiety issues in middle school and I felt like something was completely wrong with me, but I didn't have the close friends like Patrick and Sam.  However, I also didn't do as many controversial things as Charlie ended up doing.  But how could I teach this book?

First I started looking up resources about teaching controversial books: See here and here. I thought these were great introductory resources to draw from, but I still thought there were some difficulties with teaching. As I went on reading the book, I kept thinking about ways to make it work in a class because I think there were parts that were really thought provoking.  In particular, the idea of being a wallflower or being infinite would be interesting topics for students to talk about.  Thus, I was thinking that maybe with the way it is broken up I could pick out particular letters for students to read rather than reading the whole text (particularly if I think there is gonna be an issue with the content).  This way students could still get the inspiration from the piece but we could avoid the controversy.  The other way I was thinking about teaching this text would be what was suggested in the first example I linked to.  Maybe in an upper level course we could discuss banned books or controversial texts and approach the book from that perspective but still validate the importance of the text.  It is a tough balancing act to maintain. My other idea for this novel was to do what Jeffrey Wilhelm suggested in his book You Gotta BE the Book. Maybe we have to understand what our students would be comfortable reading and use that as a jumping off point to suggest things like Perks. I just think it's hard to limit a book based on its content, but I also don't want to have outraged parents on my hands.