What's Inside Children's Books?
A Court of Mist and Fury, by Sarah Maas, has garnered much attention since its release in 2016. This book is the second in The Court of Thorns and Roses 5-book set.
There are 56,929 reviews on Amazon. 89% give it five stars, 9% four stars, and 2% 3 stars. Since there is such a love or hate relationship between the Court of Mist and Fury readers and the book, it is suspicious, at best, that there are no 1- or 2-star reviews included. (Perhaps it was because those who would have given a 1- or 2-star rating didn’t want to admit to having read the book?) Goodreads lists 817,078 ratings with 76,161 reviews and a total of 4.62/5 stars.
After reading this 626-page book, which Accelerated Reader describes as containing profanity, sexual situations, and violence, I understood why so many parents were risking being raided by Garland’s thugs for objecting to its availability in school classrooms or libraries. I seriously doubt if the book’s violence was their main concern. Perhaps it was passages such as these:
His fingers plunged in and out, slow and hard . . . he brought those fingers to his mouth and sucked on them. On the taste of me. (474-475)
I want you splayed out on a table like my own personal feast. (475, 531)
I watched as he unbuttoned his pants, and the considerable length of him sprang free. (532)
Rhys roared as he came . . . Outside, the mountains trembled . . . (533)
I am not new to reading books marketed to children, so the first question I kept asking myself as I read the copy I checked out from a local library was why all the endorsements on the back were from USA Today, HuffPost, Kirkus, USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, Bustle, Booklist, and RT (Romantic Times) Book Reviews. These are not typically reviewers for children’s books.
I then went to the Bloomsbury Publishing website to see how this book was currently listed. It is not listed with their children's selections. My copy is a new edition that was published in 2020 and sports a green cover. The picture of Sarah Maas, the author, on the back cover is a new photograph in which her serpent ring is prominently featured. There is nothing on the copyright page that suggests that it is a book for children.
I then decided to look up the 2016 blue-cover edition of A Court of Mist and Fury. The copyright page reads quite differently:
In 2016 it was listed as JUVENILE FICTION. CYAC stands for the “Children’s and Young Adults’ Cataloging Program.” The BISAC is a Subject Headings or Subject Codes List.
It is a standard used by many companies throughout the supply chain to categorize books based on topical content. The Subject Heading applied to a book can determine where the work is shelved in a brick and mortar store or the genre(s) under which it can be searched for in an internal database.
The School Library Journal reviewed A Court of Mist and Fury in 2016:
. . . The sensuous romance that develops between Feyre and Rhysand will take readers on a whirlwind so fun and addicting they won't be able to put it down until the very end. Peppered with titillating scenes, the love story evolves in ways that may frustrate some readers, but remains true to real life.
A 2016 review from the Guardian reads:
I would sell my unborn child, a few limbs, a kidney and even bits of my soul for the next book. NOW.
The Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards for 2017 include A Court of Mist and Fury. These are the only national book awards chosen exclusively by kids and teens.
The Children’s Book Council website still includes the following information about a Court of Mist and Fury:
AGES: 12-up
ISBN: 9781619634466
PRICE: $18.99
PUBLISHED BY: Bloomsbury Children's Books and Walker Books for Young Readers
The included link to Bloomsbury Publishing does go to the Bloomsbury website, but when you get there, it reads, “Sorry, we couldn’t find that page. Please visit our homepage.” Of course, the link no longer goes to the 2016 edition because the 2020 edition is now listed as an adult book on their website.
Why is the book no longer listed as a book for children? Did too many parents complain about the book? Did Bloomsbury fear repercussions for marketing porn to minors? (See the copyright page above where this is listed as JUVENILE FICTION in the 2016 edition.) Were the adult readers embarrassed to have to check the book out of the young adult section of the library? I cannot answer those questions. I can tell you that the book is still shelved mostly in the young adult sections of libraries.
A 2016 edition of the book is described as JUVENILE FICTION in the listing for the libraries in my area of West Virginia. The summary doesn’t mention any sex or violence. There are 28 libraries listed with this edition of the book. 22 are shelved with the Young Adult books, 3 are included in the Juvenile Fiction section (although one of those says J (YA), 1 is included in the Teen section, 1 with the Adult fiction, and 1 with books about the Paranormal.
The second listing for this book is a 2016 ebook which is available to anyone with a library card as an instant download. However, it is on a Wait List due to the book’s popularity.
The third entry is for the 2017 edition of A Court of Mist and Fury. There are 8 listings and all are shelved with the Young Adult books. 4 of these are currently checked out.
An audio e-book is listed as the next entry. It, too, is on a Wait List. Of course, with the audio e-book, the minors do not have to bother reading this 626-page book. They can just LISTEN to someone read this to them—including the lurid sex scenes. One such scene encompasses most of a chapter.
The next entry is for the 2020 edition of the book that is not labeled for children, There are 6 libraries with this copy. 3 of the books are placed on the Young Adult shelves, 1 is shelved with the Fiction Paperback New Books, 1 is on the Adult fiction shelf, and 1 is located in the Juvenile Fiction section.
The last entry is available as a media audio player.
Not surprisingly, I checked the 2020 edition out of the Young Adult section at a nearby library. For four years, this book was labeled as a book for children, so it seems that most librarians are automatically placing the new copies in the Young Adult section. It really doesn’t matter, though, where it is placed. It is still accessible to both adults and children despite the labeling on the bookshelves.
A Virginia judge ruled that both A Court of Mist and Fury and Gender Queer were obscene for children. Later, Judge Pamela Baskervill dismissed the lawsuit. She concluded:*
. . . that part of Virginia’s state law dealing with obscenity is unconstitutional. The little-known and little-used section of the state code, around which the Republicans’ lawsuit was built, says that any Virginia citizen can file in court to have a book ruled obscene and, if a judge acquiesces, that anyone who thereafter distributes the book “is presumed to have knowledge that the book is obscene” and could be found criminally liable. The code is decades old.
In her ruling, Baskervill said the law violates the First Amendment by enabling governmental censorship and by assuming that anyone distributing an obscene book must be consciously deciding to break the law, when in fact these people might “have no knowledge that a book may be considered obscene.” The law “imposes a presumption of scienter,” or knowledge that one’s actions are wrong, Baskervill wrote. In a similar line of reasoning, Baskervill concluded that the law violates the due process clause of the constitution “by authorizing judgment without notice to affected parties.”
“Virginia Code § 18.2-384 is unconstitutional on its face,” Baskervill wrote in her final order in the case. Thus, the case itself is no longer valid and deserves dismissal, she wrote.
The Judge in this case realized that upholding the previous ruling could open a huge can of worms. There are multitudes of books. Sarah Maas, alone, has sold over 12 million books. What about these librarians, teachers, bookstore clerks, moms having yardsales, or kids swapping books? Is “Ignorance of the law no excuse?” Should each of these individuals be locked up?
Is that the end of the story? Is it of no consequence when or if the books targeting children are obscene? Shouldn’t we be disturbed that some of these people DO KNOW that the books they are pushing are pornographic and there seems to be no recourse for parents to counter this onslaught? Perhaps the focus should extend beyond the local disseminators of obscene materials for children and turn to the people producing this filth—the publishing companies. I’m sure Garland’s thugs won’t be knocking down their doors with guns drawn any time soon. No, they are saving their strength for the mommies objecting to the smut.
[* The link to this article isn't working all the time. If you need to reference this, it is:
Natanson, Hannah, “Judge thwarts Va. Republicans’ effort to limit book sales at Barnes & Noble,” 8/31/2022, The Washington Post,]
Deborah DeGroff
Between the Covers: What's Inside a Children's Book?
whatsinsidechildrensbooks.com
