My kids and I began reading banned books together when they were just learning sight words. Snuggled with my kids on the couch, I’d read aloud from a slim paperback volume of the “Captain Underpants” series. My son, 6, and my daughter, 4, followed along by looking at the images.
We giggled through the antics of fourth graders George and Harold as they conspired against their mean school principal. I’d try to keep a straight face while reading dialogue in a character voice: “Help! Wedgie Woman is in the teacher’s lounge. She just drank all the coffee and now she’s giving the gym teacher a wedgie!”
I’d rather have been reading a children’s poetry book by Jack Prelutsky than such raunchy humor. I’d hoped my kids would learn to love words as I did while listening to the sounds melding together rhythmically as I read them poems, but poetry ultimately failed to engage my kids. Instead, my son was so fascinated by “Captain Underpants” that he began creating his own series of comic books. He spent hours drawing and writing the stories of “Captain Hypnotizing Man” and “Adventures of Super Dog” on plain printer paper, stapling or taping his creations together. Soon, my daughter was also composing and stapling together her own picture books.
