Let's get this out of the way: I hate the idea of book banning. I think book banning is lazy, fearful and controlling. I think we steal from our children when we deny them books. We slam doors in their faces and we keep them from the magic of life.

I was fourteen years old when the lyrics of a Duran Duran song sent me running to the library to find out who Voltaire was and what made him cool enough for a rock star to mention. I still remember flipping through the encyclopedia (yes, I am that old) and staring at the little blurb about the randy French philosopher and thinking, "How weird." And yet, my adolescent love for Simon LeBon was great enough that I was determined to learn about this 18th Century dead guy, so I went scurrying for the card catalog (yep, really old) and found the one book of his that my Catholic high school carried. In a few minutes I was hunkered down over a copy of Candide, the librarian's warning that it might be over my head and a bit adult discarded as soon as she offered it.

Well, the librarian was right. The book was way over my head. With no sense of French political history and with even less understanding of how religion played into 18th Century politics, the satire and wit was lost on me. I was mostly disturbed and thought the work disjointed, but my interest was peaked enough that I decided to learn French and study that particular time period.

If my freshman crush hadn't sent me to the library it would have been another six years before I had encountered Voltaire again. That is if my love for literature had continued to grow. More, if Candide had not been available to me, over my head, too adult or not, I might never have voluntarily picked up Rousseau, who led me to Thomas Paine, who sent me to Thomas Jefferson and so on. If I hadn't been pricked by something in Candide I wouldn't have bothered to keep searching out Voltaire's quotes and comments on life. Then I would have waited years to stumble upon Dorothy Parker and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table, all of whom I found crowded together with Voltaire, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron in a fantastically wicked book of sayings.

Great art sent me on a search for greater art. That art sent me on a quest for history and timely understanding. History and timely understanding led me back to art of all kinds. I developed a great love for literature, languages, music and painting, a love that I ultimately owe to a rock star, a philosopher and a librarian.

I transferred schools two years later and enrolled in the public school system. The library was always a haunt for me, so I hurried to check out what was available at my new school. No Voltaire, but that wasn't too surprising. He was a bit racy. No Oscar Wilde, which was mildly surprising. But there were no books by any of my favorite Algonquiners. No Shakespeare to be checked out. Most surprising, I couldn't even find Mark Twain.

What I could find were lines of juvenile fiction, dry biographies written on a fourth grade level, technical manuals and science books. Already a literary snob at seventeen, I turned up my nose and only went back to the library there when forced.

But where were all the books? They'd been banned. They just weren't there at all.

You see, some books, like a Mein Kampf are considered too mind bending for youngsters. I read that when I was sixteen as a reaction to having read The Hiding Place. You see, I wanted to know for myself what Hitler had to say. I wasn't convinced that anyone was really that evil. I needed the Fuhrer to show me himself.

I had to have permission to check out that book. The school was concerned that I might become a Nazi, I suppose. My mother knew better. She had taken the time to teach me to think, reason and navigate my world. She was available to talk to me about the book when I had questions, as were teachers and even the librarian.

I think, all too often, we ban books because we are lazy. It would have been much easier to refuse my request to read Adolf Hitler's great work of insanity. It would have been easier to ban his thoughts from my mind. But how much wiser, how much more responsible, how much more a boon to my education and development as a human being to take the time to talk to me about what I had read?

Laziness isn't the only reason we ban. We also ban books out of fear or misunderstanding, or because we want to control.

I worked for a church for several years and was caught up in the great Harry Potter maelstrom. As soon as I heard a minister say, "Now I haven't read these books myself, but here's why you should keep them out of your children's hands," I wanted a copy of each. In a few weeks, I had read all that were available, and I was getting myself into all kinds of trouble at work by trying to enlighten my fellow Christians as to the positive nature of the stories. But fear has its claws in firmly.

If children read Harry Potter then they might want to be witches, and we couldn't have that. Better to ban the books from the school and deny some of the most entertaining and thought provoking children's books I'd encountered in a while, than to take a chance on having to explain your position of faith to your child. Better that no one should have to think.

And while I am picking on the church, I will pick on the Church, who decreed for years that the Bible not be printed in a language accessible to the common man. By refusing their congregations the right to read their own religious texts, for centuries the Church was able to keep their faithful ignorant, poor and under control.

Laziness, fear and desire for control. Vices, all of them.

I was very lucky to have gone to the schools that I did. My libraries were vast and full of riches. I had worlds of opportunity to live outside my simple life. I traveled the world. I met the most colorful of characters. I learned things about my history that made my skin crawl. I was delighted and I was disturbed. But most of all, I was educated. And I never left my seat.

When we remove books from our libraries for whatever reason, we limit our children. We cut off their horizons. We slam doors of opportunity. We starve their minds. It takes more time, it takes more effort and it takes more heart, but rather than banning books, we should be educating our children. We should be teaching them to think and reason. We should be giving them the tools they need to read about the vastness of their worlds and see clearly the differences between good and evil. Hiding what we think is evil from them doesn't teach them anything. Teaching them to navigate their worlds through literature and art gives them a rock solid foundation.

I still don't understand everything in Candide. That book may be over my head for the rest of my life. Still, I will always be thankful that I had the chance to read it because it led me into the most fantastic quest of my lifetime. A quest for knowledge that I haven't come near to completing.

Lane Morris Buckman studied English, Foreign Language and Classics at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she received her B.A. in 1995.
Read More