In Search of "Clean Reads"

 Librarians have long wrestled with the question of what they should recommend to adults who want to give formative books to the children and adolescents in their lives. We live in a society whose authors love to push the envelope of propriety, so how far can a book go and still be considered a “clean read”?

The question is so important that some bloggers now compile lists of books they consider to be “clean reads.” A few examples are The Fussy Librarian, Compass Book Ratings, Life and Lit, and the Library of Clean Reads.

However, the question is more complex than it first seems. Readers of one generation may consider a book to be “clean,” while the next generation doesn’t. The same is true of readers from various faith traditions.

For example, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often cited as the quintessential American novel, yet it has been banned from libraries for various reasons since its publication. The public library of Concord, Massachusetts banned it immediately as “racist, coarse, trashy, inelegant, irreligious, obsolete, inaccurate, and mindless.” Two decades later, during the prim Edwardian era, the New York Public Library removed Huckleberry Finn from its shelves because it used crass terms like “sweat.” Still later, when the civil rights movement was at its height, hundreds of libraries banned the book because it used racial epithets. Although librarians respected Huckleberry Finn as an authentic narrative of a boy's life in antebellum America, many believed it was not a “clean” one.

Some books fall short of being “clean reads” because they contradict the religious convictions of certain groups. A pair of Amish ladies asked their public librarian to recommend a good YA novel on horses that their preteens could read.  She checked the list of recent books and found a novel written by an award-winning author, so she recommended that. The ladies returned it a few days later, quite upset. The premise of the story was that the spirits of championship horses rose from the dead during race season and inspired their descendants to win races again. That wasn't what Amish parents wanted to teach their children!

We Christian authors grapple with this same question. How can we make our stories authentic without offending prospective readers? Can we put profanity in a character’s mouth, regardless of whether that person is a believer? Can our characters drink alcohol, regardless of whether we name it for what it is or use a euphemism like “amber liquid”? Can boys and girls swim together, regardless of how much their swimwear reveals?        

In my next blog, we’ll examine the standards that various Christian authors and publishers use as their benchmarks for a “clean read.” In the meantime, consider sending a sample of your work to websites that recommend "clean reads." They can open doors to libraries as well as individuals.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. His most recent book is Hard Times (Warner Press: 2019). He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.