Reading Response

Juliette Daignault 802

             Maintaining friendships in high school can be a challenging thing. The book Ttyl by Lauren Myracle deals with the struggle of high school drama, and friendship. The three friends Maddie, Angela, and Zoe are beginning their sophomore oh high school. Fresh with great memories from their summer together they promise each other to stick together during the year. But besides this the book is also a banned or challenged book. As I read this book one question that I had was why it was banned? I did not read anything that I didn’t think could be happening in real life or was wildly inappropriate. So why was this book banned? Some reasons may have been because there was alcohol use or inappropriate relationships with teachers.

            During the book the character Maddie goes to a party and gets drunk, and dances without a shirt on. This was one of the few scenes that could be seen as inappropriate for teens to read. But this kind of thing can happen in real life and be something to be aware of. If you are aware of these things then you can try to prevent them from happening, but if you are sheltered you may be more likely to do something like this because you are oblivious to these subjects. Another scene that may be seen as inappropriate is when the three best friends are in the hot tub with the teacher Mr. H. The character Zoe is invited to go hot tubing with her teacher and she feels obliged to say yes. So her friends have to interfere and they come into the hot tub with Zoe and Mr. H and get Zoe to leave with them. This is another example of an inappropriate scene but something that could happen in real life.

            These are probably the only two inappropriate scenes in the book besides the use of bad language, and talking about sex. Theses are all things that do happen in teen’s lives and should be exposed to teens to learn more about the subject. Reading about these subjects doesn’t mean it will make teens want to do things like this, it just means they will be aware of the consequences that doing things like this will happen. Teens should feel free to read what they want even if it may seem inappropriate.

            Reading Ttyl has given me a glimpse of a banned book and why people may think it should be banned. I now know that I disagree with why these books are banned because things should be exposed to teens who want to learn about things that happen around them in their lives.