When John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, was first published in 2012 it rose to the top of bestseller lists. The love story about two cancer stricken teenagers won the hearts of teenagers globally and was soon turned into a movie starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort.
Now the book, a favourite of older teenagers, has been moved to the adult section in a library in the suburbs of Indianapolis.
Green took to X, formerly called Twitter, to voice his frustrations.
“This is ludicrous. It is about teenagers and I wrote it for teenagers. Teenagers are not harmed by reading TFIOS. This is such an embarrassment to the city of Fishers,” he said.
“I only have a small voice in these decisions, of course, but you won’t catch me alive or dead in Fishers, Indiana until these ridiculous policies are revoked,” he added. “Which I guess means no Top Golf or IKEA for a while.”
At the local library, staff have spent hours rummaging through books and moving those that don’t comply with the board’s policy to the general section from the young adult section. Books have been targeted for language about sexuality and reproduction, profanity and criminal acts.
This isn’t the first time one of Green’s books has irked administrators and parents. His book Looking for Alaska, also aimed at older teenagers, has become a regular feature on the American Library Association’s top 10 most challenged books, making the list in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2022, for being sexually explicit.
In 2008, the author filmed a YouTube video titled “I Am Not A Pornographer” explaining that a school in Buffalo, New York was planning to teach Looking for Alaska to 11th graders. But some people, he said, found the book controversial so the school administrators gave parents the choice: their children could read the book or find an alternative.
“But there were a few people who weren’t happy with this solution,” Green said in the clip. “These people didn’t actually have kids in the 11th grade, but no matter. They think that my book is pornographic, and that it will cause immoral thoughts and actions in children. These people believe that no one should be allowed to read the book, even those people whose parents signed the permission slip.”
And now with book bans on the rise across America (2022 saw the highest number of attempted book bans), Green told The Independent earlier this year that these parent groups have rallied “to take over America’s school systems”.
“There are attempts not just to ban books, but to ban entire subjects from high school curricula,” he said. “There are attempts to rewrite American history to better fit contemporary narratives around America’s purported greatness.”
The book, a coming of age story with themes of loss and forgiveness, features a scene in which the main character Miles, receives oral sex from Lara, a friend. A few pages later, in a highly emotional scene, Miles kisses another character, Alaska.
By juxtaposing the two scenes, Green said in the YouTube video, he attempts to show “that physical intimacy can never stand in for emotional closeness.”
Yet, it’s these very scenes that have led to some seeking to ban the book.
“It’s always a bummer to have your work read in bad faith,” Green told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. “It’s always a bummer when people read your work to find out what they hate about it, because that’s not, of course, why anyone writes.”
Having this specific section read out of context, he adds, is “especially troubling,” because “removed from its context, it can’t do its work – which is to point out that the romantic encounter that Miles and Lara have is awkward and unfulfilling, precisely because they don’t have the emotional connection they need to have a fulfilling romantic encounter.”
