Emily Drabble 

Banned, burned, or simply life changing: what are the best dangerous books?

Authors including Patrick Ness, Melvin Burgess, Tanya Landman, Louise O’Neill, Bali Rai, Candy Gourlay, James Dawson and Leigh Bardugo share the books they probably weren’t meant to read that either rocked their world or rocked the world
  
  

An old movie publicity still from 1929
Has a book ever terrified you, horrified you, changed the way you think about something, shocked your very foundations? Books have that power. Photograph: Gene Robert Richee/John Springer Collection/CORBIS

Patrick Ness, Author of The Chaos Walking trilogy and latest book The Rest of Us Just Live Here

I worry that once you share a Dangerous Book, it’s not dangerous anymore. The best ones are ones you stumble upon yourself and detonate in your personal, private reading experience like an explosion you’ve got to hide. I was remarkably unsupervised in the library growing up, and I think that’s absolutely the best of all worlds.

I remembering genuinely being scared by one particular scene in Stephen King’s The Talisman (with Peter Straub), but oddly only enjoying his other books rather than being terrified. I had my eyes opened in astonishing ways by an accidental (yet VERY focussed) perusal of Edmund White as a teen. Wowsers.

But maybe the most dangerous book I read was The Color Purple by Alice Walker, for all the best reasons. I was a white, sheltered, male suburban teen given two fully loaded barrels of feminism, racial history, slavery, tenderness, the beauty of sexuality, and (incidentally) formal experimentation. Aged 14, pre-internet, I won’t pretend I understood everything, but the world of reading was suddenly so much bigger, suddenly so much more intriguingly, properly dangerous, that I was never the same again. A genuinely mind-expanding book.


Tanya Landman, author of the Carnegie medal winning Buffalo Soldier

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak switched me on to the power of words and the transporting force of a good story at a very early age. It contains appalling, appealing naughtiness and deep, deep magic. Every word is delicious and powerful. I was scared by it when I was small, but that was part of the attraction. I got lost in its pages and practiced and practiced my unblinking stare, just in case. The book was banned in some American states because it wasn’t fluffy or cute. Child psychologist Bruno Bettleheim said that the book was psychologically damaging because a mother sending a child to bed without food was abusive. And in the UK that ‘banned’ aura wafted from every page. I was well aware that this book was dangerous. But it’s clear Mr Bettleheim never actually read Where the Wild Things Are because when Max comes home his supper is waiting for him. And it’s still hot. For a wonderful, weird, wild book, it’s really very comforting.


Terry Deary, author of Horrible Histories including latest Top 50 Kings and Queens

I’m going for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (published 1964) because If Roald Dahl hadn’t made black humour acceptable on the bookshelves of children’s fiction then I could never have published Horrible Histories. Before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hardly anyone died in a children’s book (except the spider in Charlotte’s Web, 1952.) Children’s naughtiness was of the Just William level of scrumping and truanting, while adult characters were often the villains and retribution on them was never violent. But Dahl had his wicked children punished by drowning in chocolate, inflating into a giant blueberry, thrown down a garbage chute and being shrunk to a couple of inches. No wonder many publishers rejected it. It was eventually accepted but many reviewers and children’s authors lambasted it as “nauseating fantasy” or “astonishingly insensitive”, while others said books should not be aimed at both children and adults … how times have changed. But young readers loved it. Dahl had blazed a giant trail that the rest of us dwarves can only follow, gratefully and humbly.’


Dawn Kurtagich – author of The Dead House

My dangerous book pick is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Shortly after it’s publication in the UK in 1959, the Minister of the Interior banned the book, because it was called “filth” and “pornography”. The ban lasted for two years.Lolita tells the story of the “romancing” of a 12 year-old young girl, told from the perspective of the 37-year-old Humbert Humbert. This novel taught me many things—the most important of them being that unreliable narrators exist! I had no conception of such a thing before this novel came into my life. Imagine discovering that the narrator whom you have come to rely on for the truth of a story has been an unreliable source the whole time! I learned that one man’s perspective might seem completely honourable to him, but that his truth may not be the core truth of a tale. What an amazing lesson to learn, and I am very lucky to have learned it from such a masterpiece.


Liz Kessler, author of Read Me Like a Book

My favourite dangerous book is The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak. Take Nazi Germany, book burnings in the street, hidden Jews in your cellar, a girl pitted against Hitler himself, and then throw in God as your narrator - and you’ve got yourself a dangerous book. The Book Thief is a wonderful, life affirming novel which continues to be a relevant, powerful and important read.


Melvin Burgess, author of Junk, Lady: My Life as a Bitch and Persist

I’m not convinced that books are dangerous any more. Our society is such a vigorous beast, it swallows ideas whole and makes them its own in one gulp. It’s a lot of fun when people get upset about books, but it’s all thunder and no lightning strikes. But books can change people - how they think, how they view the world, and there are books that actively frighten me. When I was young, the books that influenced me were all about opening the doors of perception.

One book I loved, and that really made me feel it was possible to blow the mind apart and put it together in a new way, was The Teachings of Don Juan, by Carlos Castaneda. Originally published as anthropology (something that has been much questioned since) it’s the the story of a young man’s apprenticeship with a Yaqui “Man of Knowledge.” There’s all sorts of spiritual and magical practices, and a lot of hallucinogenic drugs involved. It’s a fascinating book, still. Looking back, some it seems to be rubbish, but a lot of it is still mysterious and wonderful and still attracts me - not so much in the magic, but in the ideas underneath. And yes, it could be dangerous, partly because it refuses to talk about what is true and what is not true. But - and all those hallucinogenic drugs! Not something to undertake lightly. The idea still frightens the pants off me.


Nicky Singer, author of Feather Boy

Our house was full of books and nobody restricted (or indeed directed…) my reading. One day, aged about 12, I selected Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. I have a very vivid recollection of the cover which may – or may not – be accurate; a soft pink background, a women’s body enveloped in furs. No head to the body. No face. The book is, of course, a highly charged tale of sexual slavery and degradation by the man who gave his name to masochism. I found it suitably exciting – and read it more than once. I don’t believe I was sexually damaged/awakened or shaped by the experience. I remember the feeling of frisson when reading – but no shame or guilt. I’m not sure I would have suggested the book to my own daughter at that age, but then I think there is a huge difference between ‘suggesting’ and ‘finding’ such a book. It does make me think that while there are often dark themes in YA fiction, 12 years olds are highly protected these days. Maybe we should trust our young people more…

Sita Brahmachari, author of Artichoke Hearts and Kite Spirit

I’m going for The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath. I considered it dangerous because I was told by the librarian that it was too tragic and depressing for someone my age . I was then fifteen and thought I should be able to read anything. So naturally in the great tradition of when an adult does tell you not to read something it becomes strangely more compelling. Actually I should have listened. I found it profoundly upsetting to see this woman in a hopeless mental decline but also to know that the author had taken her own life. I also remember having a dream after reading it in which I imagined someone from Plath’s family coming to find me and telling me that “The story is private” and “You have not right intrude”.

It’s how I felt as I read it, perhaps this is because of the autobiographical quality. I did enjoy reading it because of of the rites of passage story of a young woman making her way in the world. It also later led me to Plath’s and Ted Hughes poetry which I became rather obsessed with at University. I think I was caught up in the intersection between a fictional and real life story and found that fascinating but also dangerous to play out those relationships in fiction.

Natasha Farrant, author of the Bluebell Gadsby Diaries.

My dangerous book was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I don’t know what possessed me to read it. I had seen an old film of Dracula at the age of 13, which had my cousin and little sister in stitches of laughter, and me cowering behind the sofa. Well into my twenties, I couldn’t sleep unless the sheets or duvet were pulled over my head, making my neck inaccessible to vampire fangs. I used to sleep with garlic in my bedroom and say the Hail Mary every night. I think I read the book to exorcise the demon of the film, but it only made things worse. I had to hide it in a drawer when I wasn’t reading it, in another room, wrapped in blankets so the evil Count couldn’t crawl out and get me. I was actually afraid of the book as a physical object.

Jenny Valentine, author of Finding Violet Park and Fire Colour One

The most dangerous book I read (when I was about 13) was probably Go Ask Alice. At the time, it was sold as a non fiction book, the diary of a real (middle class, white, American, teenage) girl slipping from her normal happy life into an underworld of drugs and sex and misery. I still have my 1980 corgi edition. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous, all bleeding hearts and shocking truths and primary evidence. I remember finding it powerful and moving at the time, especially because three weeks after the last diary entry, anonymous was found dead by her parents. That’s not why the book was dangerous. It was dangerous because it was basically a lie. Written by a psychologist called Beatrice Sparks, (apparently based on the diaries of a patient but those were never produced) it reads now like a heavy handed, conformist, alarmist tract. Dressed up as the authentic voice of teenage anguish, it’s really just a judgemental cautionary tale. And a manipulative one at that. I wonder if it did more harm than good, although not oto Ms Sparks and her publishers. It was a bestseller for close to a decade. As a 13-year[old I was taken in by it. I’m not sure how many people would be now.

James Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay and most lately All Of The Above

I would say James Herbert’s ‘Creed’ which I read when I was about 12. It’s scary, surreal and hugely sexually explicit. I really had no business reading it, to be honest, and that’s why I always defend young adult fiction - some people might say it’s dark or subversive even, but it’s always within the realm of exploration, experimentation and testing boundaries. That said, reading Creed “never did me any harm” and, looking back, was perfectly natural curiosity, which I think is something to be encouraged.

Candy Gourlay, author of Shine

When I was growing up in the Philippines, there were very few locally published books for children and so everything I read was imported from America and the United Kingdom. When I think back, ALL the books I read as a child were dangerous. They took me out of the ordered rules of my cultural life and proposed that there were other choices out there.

I explored worlds that bore no resemblance to my own in my native Philippines. They made me disgruntled, discontented with my lot. Western characters seemed to travel everywhere, and as a little girl in Manila, I could not imagine ever being wealthy enough to even travel to any of the nearby countries in Southeast Asia. I puzzled over how characters spoke their minds. In my ordinary world, there were complex, unwritten ways of communicating, saying yes even if you mean no is an art embedded in many Asian cultures.

It was not just culture clash either. Here were child characters who had eye-popping adventures, who ignored boundaries, who took their fates in their own hands. It was terrifying and unimaginable. And oh so delicious.

Piers Torday, author of The Last Wild trilogy

I remember very clearly reading Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth when I was around 10, probably plucking it at random from a stuffed bookshelf in a house we were renting on holiday, and devouring it immediately. I don’t think my parents were that outraged, but I was! It’s a fast paced violent thriller about an attempt to assassinate a French president, Charles de Gaulle, and is part based on a real life hitman called Carlos the Jackal. But it opened my eyes to so much. I was shocked by scenes where policemen, who I had always thought of as the good guys, colluded with corrupt criminals or worse. The French secret services, who I presumed to be heroes like our James Bond, kidnap and torture people in the name of the national interest. Nice and innocent people get killed, sometimes brutally. There is sexual violence. The book has been filmed twice, and by today’s standards, might seem quaint to many. But when I remember my alarm, shock, dismay and total visceral thrill at discovering the many certainties I took for granted - like trusting all security forces without question - I’m reminded of powerful effect books written for different ages can have on their unintended readers.

Bali Rai, author of (Un)arranged marriage and Web of Darkness

The first book I’d classify as dangerous would be The Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley). It’s a book that changed the way I thought about politics, and the power relationships that define modern societies in the West. It’s a challenging and brutally honest book. I was twenty-one years old when I read it, and it made so much sense - especially at a time when Stephen Lawrence’s murder was still very recent. The book made me angry, and it made me determined to write about big themes in Life. But it also gave me hope. Malcolm X’s early life was blighted by poverty, crime, racism and drug addiction, yet he managed to overcome those challenges and better him own life, and the lives of countless others.

At the same time, I was reading Yardie by Victor Headly - an amazingly visceral and accurate story about a Jamaican drug dealer in London. I’d always wanted to write books about real lives, on real streets, and much of literature felt stale and boring. Yardie was a massive punch in the face by comparison. Most mainstream reviewers slaughtered the book at review - and the writing isn’t exactly Booker Prize level - but Yardie was never meant to be part of the mainstream, or classically literary. It stuck two fingers up at traditional ideas about literature, and would have had most old-school English professors and reviewers pulling their hair out. For that reason alone, it was fresh and dangerous, and utterly brilliant.

Rae Earl, author of My Mad Fat Diary

I knew some books were dangerous when my mum ripped up, in a brilliantly flamboyant way, a slice of prime pulp about the Hells Angels that my brother had. In fact he had loads of books I wasn’t meant to read like Jerry Ahern’s ‘The Survivalist’ series (guns, nuclear war, cannibals).

Horror didn’t appeal to me though. My Mum however had some corkers that probably to this day she doesn’t know I read really early on. The one that really stands out is John Fowles ‘The Collector’. At about age 11 I was WAY too young for it but it gripped me. As someone brought up on a heady diet of public information films about ‘Stranger Danger’ and goodies and baddies it turned everything I knew turn on its head. It plays with the reader like no book I’ve read before or since. And that ending? My head was wonderfully messed up for years. Plus I’m still wary of vans.

Louise O Neill, author of Only Ever Yours and Asking For It

The first book I remember reading that would have been considered ‘dangerous’ was Junk by Melvin Burgess. My mother bought it for me when I was eleven, she didn’t believe in censoring my love for reading in any way. The world of squatting, addiction, and anarchy in the novel was as far removed as could be from my own childhood in a small town in the wilds of west Cork. That book shook me to my very core; it made me see how easily young people could fall through the cracks of our society if not protected. It made me consider what my life might have been like if I had been born to different parents or in a different part of the world.

Leigh Bardugo, author of of Six of Crows and the Grisha trilogy

Louise Erdrich’s shorty story “Fleur” was sensual, awful, confusing perfection. It was the start of my love for magical realism, and as a victim of sexual assault, it was the story I didn’t know I needed until it came to life in my hands. I saw myself in Pauline, the weak-willed narrator who doesn’t know what to make of dangerous, confident Fleur. But I wanted to see myself in Fleur: a woman who survives violence and is in no way humbled by it—who is, in fact, a violent, vengeful force of her own. It was probably a story meant for older readers, but it found its way to me at just the right time.

Dav Pilkey, author of Captain Underpants

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was banned in my school because of the language. I found a copy in my local library and read it specifically because I was not allowed to read it. It was the first chapter book I ever finished, and it’s because the story was so captivating. The sense of accomplishment I received from completing a long chapter book gave me the confidence to pick up my next book.

We want this blog to grow. Please send us your dangerous books on Twitter @GdnChildrensBks or by email childrens.books@theguardian.com.

Your dangerous books:

Site member, Amber Kirk Ford
My choice of dangerous book has to be Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill. It’s incredibly powerful and I can imagine some teachers/parents/organisations might not be happy with its feminist message. I love it, though! It made me realise that, throughout my entire life, I’ve been the target of sexism multiple times and I hadn’t even noticed. Only Ever Yours opened my eyes, made me stronger and forced me to start sticking up for myself and standing up for what I believe in.”

Megan Quibell; AKA The Book Addicted Girl
I’m struggling to think of a book I’d refer to as ‘dangerous’. Do I choose one that was banned because of its content, but is absolutely amazing and needs to be read by everyone, like To Kill A Mockingbird by the brilliant Harper Lee? Do I choose a book that has given me a fair few nightmares, was totally inappropriate at the time I read it and contained all manners of brutal violence (Kiss The Girls by James Patterson; I bought it second-hand because he wrote Maximum Ride. I was ten and I blame this book for my disturbing obsession with crime dramas).

But I’m going to choose a book many people might avoid or might not even know about, a book that taught me to always consider both sides of an argument before getting involved and a book that has stayed with me since 2011. Before We Say Goodbye by Gabriella Ambrosio. It was actually one endorsed by Amnesty and was based on the true story of a suicide bombing in 2002 in Jerusalem. It’s about two girls - one Palestinian, one Israeli - and how their lives link together, all leading towards the one unavoidable, devastating end…

This book devastated me - even more so after I learnt it was based on true events - and has stayed with me for years. It reminded me of the fear and horror I experienced when I saw the Twin Towers fall. It taught me what horrors other girls my age experience every day in war-torn countries, how often they have no other options in life. It reminded me how lucky I am, not having to constantly worry about being killed or attacked.

One quote in particular has always stuck with me - maybe it will stick with you too:
“We have become a violent people, that’s true. But when they’ve been pointing a gun at your chest since you were small and you’ve been subjected to abuse since you were born, what do they expect you to become, if not violent?”

 

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