One of my favorite books of all time is being challenged because some people think it isn’t appropriate for teen readers. Eleanor and Park was written my Rainbow Rowell (the same author who has written Fangirl, Carry On, Attachments, and Landline). I read this little nugget of perfection when I was a junior in high school one evening when my friends were over. I sat down and devoured the entire thing, not realizing that halfway through my friends got up and left me to sit alone, reading my book. I remember looking up when I was done and as I closed my book I wondered where’d everyone go? I soon looked at my phone for the time and realized that it was almost midnight and my friends had gone home.
Eleanor and Park was one of the first few books I read upon completing a number of other series (Harry Potter, Beautiful Creatures, every John Green book I could get my hands on) and when I say that it really changed my life, I mean it. Eleanor is a girl who isn’t pretty in obvious ways. She’s not the school cheerleader, she’s not inherently hot, she’s just a plus sized read head with a crush on her schools hot guy. She doesn’t have the prettiest of lives either, but what she does have, above all else, is a pretty mind. And her mind is what makes people love her; it’s what makes people see past her outside (which is actually beautiful; beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and into who she really is.
Park is just a young guy who doesn’t really think much about anything until he meets Eleanor, but I won’t spoil the book for anyone who wants to read it. All I’ll say is that I loaned this book out to my grandma a couple of weeks ago and she absolutely loved it. She said that it reminded her of when she moved to Alaska (she was a military kid) and nobody knew her, and nobody would talk to her until she was on the bus one day and someone did.
This book is about more than what people are challenging it on. Eleanor and Park is about being different, loving someone, and what the world can be like. I can’t believe that someone would want to keep this away from a young reader, especially because I was a young reader when I read this and now I want to be a high school English teacher. I hope to one day have this book in my classroom library, and I hope that one day it will affect one my students as deeply as it affected me. I love this book with every ounce of my being.
If you’ve read this book and want to help Eleanor and Park NOT get censored, or know someone who has read and would probably want to help, you can email the NCAC (National Coalition Against Censorship, or the people who help books remain in their natural form) at ncac.ncac.org
OR
You can write them a letter at
NCAC
19 Fulton St., Suite 407
New York, NY 10038
If not, I sincerely hope you get the chance to pick up this book. Honestly, it has made me a better person. Here’s a link to Rainbow Rowell’s news page about the whole thing: