film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

fault-in-our-stars-shailene-woodley-.jpeg

'The Fault in Our Stars' Was Banned From Schools for Daring to Make Kids Think Sad Thoughts

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | September 26, 2014 |

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | September 26, 2014 |



This week the literary gatekeepers of Riverside, California decided to ban John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars from its middle schools. And it wasn’t even banned on the grounds of misuse of a Shakespearean quotation. No, instead it was because the book is widely known to cause this reaction upon reading it:

jess-crying.gif

Yes, this young adult book was deemed too sad for young adults. The principal of one of the district’s middle schools explained her thoughts on the book:

The thing that kept hitting me like a tidal wave was these kids dealing with their own mortality, and how difficult that might be for an 11-year-old or 12-year-old reading this book.

The banning gained extra attention seeing as this is National Banned Books Week (hooray for banned books!), and fans began asking John Green for his feelings on the matter. While most of us can probably agree that literary censorship is a f*cking embarrassing blight on any society that enacts it, Green revealed some more sinister motivations for his opposition. He posted his response to his Tumblr:

howarth-johngreen.png

Finally, the true motivations behind depressing YA fiction revealed.