I wrote it for anyone who wants to read it, and I want as many readers as I can get, and I want to meet them honestly.” As part of the No to Age Banding campaign in the UK, he said, “I did not intend the book for this age, and not that for one class of reader, and not others. He’s not suggesting that we force 8-year-olds to read Lolita, nor does he have an issue with people recommending his books for a certain age range. The author Philip Pullman pushes back against His Dark Materialsbeing filed into an age based category, and has actively campaigned against age branding of books. Though I’m not a librarian, I know that their role is crucial in children’s literacy and that a book might suit different readers at different times.
I acknowledge also that some books may not be suitable for children, of course. As an adult, I’m furious that interference by a lone far-right campaigner can directly deny a young person access to a text that could help them work out who they are. As a child I had no concept how seemingly innocent gatekeeping might have impacted me.
I’ve written for Book Riot before about how manuals around family planning were banned in Ireland, and censorship has long played a role in the conservative backdrop of the state. But I was a child in the 1990s, when issues around gender expression, sexuality, identity, and even consent weren’t part of the mainstream discourse in Ireland.
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