Mary Beth, who is seven, has just finished her first “chapter book.” She is so thrilled to have at her fingertips the wide, wonderful world of books! She lives in a house that is filled with books. We have a walk-in closet in our fifth bedroom that is covered, floor-to-ceiling, with bookshelves.
In every bedroom, there is another bookcase and there are books in baskets in every other room of the house. To be able to read is to gain wide access to our home, indeed.
With this newfound ability comes responsibility. Books are glorious windows unto the world. They can take a young girl to Avonlea, to Plum Creek, to Wonderland. But they can also take her into the dark world of the drug culture or to the sexually advanced, misguided world of Judy Blume.
As Mary Beth grows up, books will be her best friends. We have talked about choosing friends wisely. She will be influenced by girls whose company she keeps. In the revised version of Beautiful Girlhood, Karen Andreola writes, “When a girl chooses her friends she should as much as possible select those who will be a help to her. If she chooses the quiet, modest, sincere, earnest girls for her friends, she will become like them; but if her friends are mostly the ‘loud,’ vulgar, thoughtless and giddy kind, though she had been a reasonable sensible girl in the beginning, she will soon be as her companions.”
Andreola goes on to write, “So it is with books. If a girl will choose her books from those whose ideals are high and whose language is pure and clean, unconsciously she will mold her life like to those portrayed in the books she reads …. ” To this, I would add that a girl must guard her heart and choose wisely when it comes to music and television as well. A young girl’s mind will absorb the culture to which she is exposed. If she is fed a steady diet of popular junk, she will be made into a young woman full of junk.
Britney Spears is soon to release a new album. This young woman, who at 21 is the only artist to ever have all her albums debut at number one, is about to make available to young girls everywhere an album whose songs contain blatant messages of self-gratifying sex and masturbation. “But it’s just a song,” comes the protest. “It’s just a movie,” they protest again. “It’s just a romance novel.” Just a little junk. Just a little poison. And the slow decay begins.
I’m reminded of the often-told story about the father of teenagers whose children were begging him to let them see an R-rated movie. There’s just a little violence, just a little foul language, just a fleeting sex scene, they reasoned. So he baked them a pan of brownies, full of the finest ingredients. And into it he stirred just a little dog poop. He offered them the brownies. No takers. Just a little poop poisoned the whole pan.
Our culture is, unfortunately, all too tolerant of more than a little poop. It unapologetically heralds the arrival of a new CD so full of garbage and it scarcely wonders why so many young, innocent girls begin to dress and then to act like grownup wild women. It lauds the library that displays the trash of the last generation on a low table in the children’s section to celebrate “Banned Book Month.” We don’t need Britney Spears to glorify sex. We don’t need Judy Blume to tell our girls about menstruation, masturbation and Planned Parenthood. We need to reclaim the innocence lost to our daughters.
Karen Andreola asserts that one could go to a girl’s bookshelf and study it for a little while to learn the girl’s character. I think we could go a bit further. Take a look around her bedroom. What magazines litter the floor beside her bed; what posters hang on the wall; what CDs play in the background; what clothes hang in the closet? Is your little girl growing up surrounded by all that is good, and pure and noble and true? Or is there more than a little poop in her world?
Elizabeth Foss is a freelance writer from Northern Virginia. Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home by Elizabeth Foss can be purchased at www.4reallearning.com.
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
