Dear Gov. Ayotte: I am a mother of three grown children and a veteran high school English teacher.
When my children were just 5, 7 and 8 years old, I began reading chapter books aloud to them, starting with Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones. I remember one specific day when my mom joined us for our cozy reading time. We sat cuddled under a blanket, all five of us on a kid-worn couch, eyes fixed on me as the words spilled from my lips.
When Junie B. insisted that her stuffed elephant, Philip Johnny Bob, needed a drink of water before she could fall asleep, we belly-laughed until our ribs ached.
Not long after our Junie B. era, I began to introduce books with more emotional depth and thematic complexity.
I remember hesitating before reading Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, a story that explores the trauma of tragic loss and the weight of grief. When we reached the climactic moments, my children were visibly ruffled, wholly engaged and brimming with questions. With Paterson’s help, I was finally able to talk to them about death, something I couldn’t do years earlier when my husband was called to active duty in Iraq.
During my husband’s absence, the shadow of loss hung around my family like a cautionary storm. Ultimately, it was a book that provided the gateway I needed to start a necessary and uncomfortable conversation with my children.
In my classroom, students often ask why we don’t read more “straight-up happy” stories. I respond with a question of my own: “When you’re elated, truly happy and fully satisfied, what do you do?” Most students shout out some version of: I just enjoy it. I live in the moment. And that’s exactly the point I am trying to get them to understand.
Joy doesn’t often demand reflection. But hardship always does. We process our pain; we search for meaning; we strive to unravel the knotted threads of our lives. And literature helps us do this. This isn’t just my belief as a teacher and a mother, it’s the truth of being human. Stories help us survive life’s most treacherous moments.
If educators are pushed to teach only books that avoid emotional or psychological complexity, if students are denied the safe space of exploring difficult topics through literature, I don’t know what we’ll do.
It’s a challenge to find a book of literary merit that’s bereft of difficult topics. There’s a reason we call our field The Humanities. Those of us who do the hard work of helping kids navigate discomfort, uncertainty, grief and resilience through stories aren’t just teaching reading and writing — we’re helping students to become discerning, empathetic, critical thinkers.
After all, they are young adults actively facing real-world challenges. How can they do that when the books that help them understand the world are taken away, demonized or metaphorically burned at the stake?
Mandy Tirrell lives in Salisbury.