>>REVIEW
THE SLEDDING HILL
Chris Crutcher
HarperCollins, 240 pp.
The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher is a young adult novel about censorship. Because young adult books are those most often challenged or banned, The Calgary Freedom to Read Week committee has chosen to present this book to city council. The committee upholds the right of parents to choose what their own children read, but not dictate to other parents what their children read.
Billy, the 14-year-old narrator of The Sledding Hill, has just died in an accident. His friend Eddie, reeling from Billy’s loss, finds refuge in silence. He thinks he’s being haunted when Billy appears to him at the sledding hill, their old meeting place, encouraging him to speak up for himself.
At school, the teacher-librarian assigns Warren Peece, a novel by Chris Crutcher, to Eddie’s class. Students who have never read an entire book are hooked on it, but another teacher, who is also a preacher at a fundamentalist church, objects to the book’s contents. He mobilizes a group, Youth for Christ, along with some parents and several school board members to insist on the withdrawal of the book on the grounds that it is evil. In Peece, one character is homosexual, another considers an abortion, and young people use obscene language and are encouraged to question authority.
Crutcher presents the two sides of the censorship argument through adults as well as students. The teacher-librarian tells her class to "decide whether you think your mind is strong enough to hear tough stories, told in their native tongue – and let the censors know." Dan, the football hero who heads Youth for Christ, believes devoutly in his crusade against the book. Montana, a Goth dressed in black with "enough chains to start a towing company" speaks out in support of the book on behalf of her friends, who have begun to discuss these issues for the first time.
In The Sledding Hill, the author puts one of his own novels at the heart of a bitter censorship campaign. Crutcher has experienced real battles over his books in several U.S. jurisdictions, so this novel has a basis in fact. The Calgary Freedom to Read Week committee recommends The Sledding Hill to all young Calgarians who are free to read. |
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