To the Editor:

The illogic of banning books for all students and parents that are neither pornographic, obscene, have won multiple book awards, and the Board of Education members have agreed are both of educational and literal value is puzzling. The only explainable motive for the banning appears to be disagreement with the ideas and content of the books.

Here is an analogy to clarify the situation.

A handful of parents want to eliminate the rights of other parents and children simply because they believe the content of an issue may be harmful to their child. They want to ban books for everyone. Let’s take an analogous circumstance. A handful of parents have children who actually do have a potentially harmful issue, the children are allergic to peanuts.

The parents are concerned that their children, a handful compared to the 3,200 plus children, might get peanut candy trick-or-treating on Main Street. Do those good, kind and concerned parents demand that Halloween on Main Street be canceled for everyone because of their concern for their own children? Of course not. What they personally requested is that the Main Street residents put non peanut candy or treats in a teal bucket and when trick-or-treating either they or their child asks for the teal bucket. These are responsible parents caring for all children, including their own.

This handful of book banning parents appear not of the teal bucket faction. They want to ban books for everyone. The teal bucket solution is available, though. If parents don’t think they are good enough parents that they can direct their children to not read certain books they singularly find objectionable then the alternative solution is that the high school library simply keeps on one alphabetical page students whose parents have limited their book removals and on another paged form the name of books banned by the parent. It’s a matter of two folders.

Perhaps the real question is whether the anti-teal bucket book banners really want a solution, or just more confrontation similar to their anti-vaccine and anti-mask agitation provoked earlier.

Vanessa Villamil

Sandy Hook