So, yesterday I came across a book at the library for children titled Combat Handbook. Although it is a gaming book, I was appalled by the title. How did I come across this book? I work at the library as a page and it was mine to check in.

Where do we draw the line at what we give children to read? Is it a kind of censorship if we restrict topics we find inappropriate  for children? These aren’t new questions. But are they ever answered? Some writers’ priority is to sell books. The title Combat Handbook will sell books.

Something else I find disturbing at the library is that we now subscribe to The National Enquirer. Why? Because there is an audience for it. Man has double heads, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson’s ghosts haunt Hollywood stages, the martian will be landing soon, or is alien the new word for martian. These things are not even close to the most outrageous of things found in The National Enquirer. Maybe The National Enquirer fills a hole in people that need to feed on imaginative tales.

Other media that appalled me was the show on television called 100 Ways to Die. What is that? For a person such as myself, who has attempted suicide at least eleven times in my 51-year-old life, this is not a show for me to watch. When darkness drops over me, I don’t need to know ways to die that are fool proof. Today, I know I am terrible at dying. Today, I am far from wanting to die. This is amazing to me; I haven’t felt haunted for a good seven years.

I don’t have children. I don’t play electronic games. Maybe if I had children and did play electronic games, I would feel much different about a book called Combat Handbook for children. It seems to me that the generation of children now will have very different experiences to draw from once they reach adulthood. I am all for change. I believe it is the responsibility of adults to impart as much knowledge as possible to young people and encourage them to surpass what we do in this life of ours. May the next generation be smarter, kinder, and healthier than we are.