Despite the history of the United States being a champion of freedom of speech, words are now often highly contentious and even dangerous here. A poor choice of words posted online can result in harassment and sometimes death threats. Books are being banned because a vocal minority are offended by the ideas expressed in them. People have been fired for supporting political causes in their non-work hours.
It’s important to remember that the First Amendment protects U.S. citizens from having their speech restricted by the government, not their employers or their parents. It does allow government regulation of speech that involves obscenity, plagiarism, blackmail, threats, and lying under oath. These limits to the First Amendment are constantly being tested, such as by the question of whether the government can restrict opinions expressed on Facebook and other online platforms.
Even in the United States, the Sedition Act of 1918 made it a crime to criticize the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution, and the military during World War I. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions of thousands of anti-war activists under this law. Fortunately for us all, the Supreme Court changed course in later years, but the history of the act makes it clear how easily freedom of speech can be legislated away.
Freedom of speech is now under attack again, this time by local and state governments that are banning books from school libraries and public libraries as a way to suppress ideas with which they disagree. The books described below illustrate what could happen if this trend continues. They show how dangerous words can be under totalitarian governments. They also show how words can be used to resist oppression.
Girl in the Blue Coat
By Monica Hesse
When Girl in the Blue Coat begins, Hanneke Bakker appears to be the epitome of an innocent Dutch schoolgirl. She’s actually a skilled procurer of black-market goods in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II. She’s very good at what she does, skillfully negotiating her way around the soldiers on the street and concealing from her parents what she does during the day. She’s not so good at letting go of her guilt over the death of her boyfriend, who died on the front lines after she goaded him into joining the army.
When a client asks for Hanneke for her help in finding a missing Jewish teenager she’d been hiding in her home, Hanneke doesn’t want to get involved. Her first goal is survival, and looking for a Jewish teenager is sure to escalate the danger she already faces. In spite of her misgivings, however, she finds herself obsessed with the mystery of Mirjam, the missing girl.
While searching for Mirjam, Hanneke reluctantly becomes involves with the Dutch resistance movement, which opens her eyes to the true horrors of the occupation — one in which a few carelessly uttered words could lead to the slaughter of innocent people. She also unearths a heartbreaking story of love and betrayal.
Girl in the Blue Coat is impeccably researched and intricately plotted. Historical fiction doesn’t get any better than this.
You can learn more about Monica Hesse here.
Words on Fire
By Jennifer Nielsen
Audra Zikaris has lived a relatively sheltered life on her parent’s farm in what was once Lithuania, although she knows that danger lies beyond the boundaries of the farm. Russia maintains harsh control over the country and has forbidden all references to Lithuanian religion, books, or language. In June of 1893, Cossack soldiers suddenly come to the farm. Audra’s parents insist that she leave them behind and escape to the forest, but first they give her a wrapped package with instructions on where to take it. She reluctantly does as she’s told. From the forest, she watches as her home bursts into flames.
After a long and terrifying journey, Audra is able to deliver the package. It is then she discovers that her parents were part of a book smuggling network. It seems likely that they have been arrested and sent to Siberia for the crime of disseminating books written in the Lithuanian language about Lithuanian history and culture. She is at first resentful that her parents have been taken from her because of something as trivial as books, and she agrees to help carry illegal books from place to place only as a way to honor her parents.
Audra’s parents had not allowed her to attend the local school because they didn’t want her indoctrinated into Russian culture. Once she’s exposed to the world of books, she begins learning to read. The more she learns, the more she understands why her parents were willing to sacrifice so much to preserve books. She develops a passion for getting books to the people who crave them, and she proves to be a clever and resourceful book carrier herself.
As Audra reads more about her country’s history and culture, her determination to win the freedom to read grows. An especially important part of the story to me is that her commitment to the cause also grows as her friendships with her fellow book carriers deepen. She becomes part of a community with a larger purpose.
Audra and her companions face constant danger. The Cossack soldiers do not hesitate to burn entire villages or churches in their zeal at ferreting out Lithuanian books and the people who read them. The threat of being executed on the spot or shipped to Siberia is always present. Even one word spoken in the forbidden Lithuanian language could expose their network of book carriers.
Although Words on Fire is fiction, it is based on the true story of the book carriers, or knygnešiaĩ, of Lithuania. Jennifer Nielsen provides a detailed picture of life in a country occupied by tsarist Russia with plenty of realistic drama and suspense.
You can learn more about Jennifer Nielsen here.
The Light in Hidden Places
By Sharon Cameron
When she was twelve years old, Stefania Podgόrska, known as Fusia, achieved a goal. She moves from her family’s farm in rural Poland to the exciting town of Przemyśl. She takes a job in a shop run by Jewish storekeepers, who welcome her into their family. Fusia thrives in her new life and eventually falls in love with a son of her adoptive family. Then Germany invades Poland, and the horror that we now know as the Holocaust begins.
Fusia is Catholic, but her adoptive family is Jewish, and they are all forced into a ghetto for Jews. Fusia quickly learns just how depraved the Nazis are. The young man she loves is tortured and murdered after a failed plot to rescue him from a labor camp. Her adoptive parents are taken by train to what Fusia learns is a death camp. Her mother and brother are taken to a forced labor camp, and she finds that her six-year-old sister has been left with caretakers who beat and starved her.
Fusia has read the signs posted throughout the town that state “Death penalty for all who give aid to a Jew.” She has seen what happened to neighbors caught hiding Jews in their home: All of them, even young children, were executed on the street. Fusia knows what will happen to her and to her little sister if she is caught helping her Jewish friends, and she does it anyway. She begins by smuggling their belongings out of the ghetto, selling these to buy food, and then smuggling food and other supplies back into the ghetto.
Fusia later agrees to hide one Jew in her home for what was to be one night. She eventually agrees to hide thirteen Jews in her home for a total of eighteen months. This involves a desperate struggle to find food, clothing, and medicine for fifteen people in a war-torn economy. It involves evading and outsmarting the Nazi soldiers who control the town, even when some of the soldiers are sleeping in a room directly below the attic where the thirteen Jews are hiding.
In The Light in Hidden Places, a single word overheard by the wrong person could result in instant death for dozens of people. But this is not an action-adventure story in which events are inflated to make them more exciting. It is a fictionalized version of a true story. Stefania Podgόrska and her sister Helena really did save thirteen Jews from certain death by hiding them in an attic space in their home for eighteen months. Details of their actions have been corroborated by multiple witnesses.
Author Sharon Cameron provides a lengthy author’s note that describes what happened to each of the characters in the story after the war ended. In 1979, Stefania and Helena were named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in recognition of their bravery and determination to fight evil.
You can learn more about Sharon Cameron here.
Thomas Paine and the Dangerous Word
By Sarah Jane Marsh
Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
I remembered from long-ago history classes that Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense and that it had a powerful effect during the American Revolution, but I knew little about the man himself. As I began reading this biography of him by Sarah Jane Marsh, what came to mind was an old Southern expression: “Bless his heart.”
The poor man tried to escape a life spent stitching corsets in England by joining the crew of a privateer, but he learned that he wasn’t suited for that much adventure. He opened his own corset-making business, but that was a flop. He got married, but his wife died soon afterwards. He was a failure as a teacher and a preacher. He got fired from his job as a tax collector.
Paine remarried, got his job back, and was doing well until his fellow tax collectors asked him to be the one to write their demands for better pay and working conditions. That got him fired again, and his marriage also ended. He decided to get a fresh start by emigrating to America.
Life did improve for Paine in America, but when British troops shot and killed dozens of colonists in Lexington and Concord, he caught revolutionary fever. He began writing about the injustices of British rule in the colonies. At first, no one paid attention to his opinions. Most people wanted to keep the peace with Britain. They especially didn’t want to hear that dangerous word — independence. Friends told him he should tone down his language.
Paine had a long history of persevering in the face of adversity, and he didn’t listen to the warnings. He published a 79-page pamphlet called Common Sense on January 9, 1776, in which he came right out and demanded independence for the American colonies. He even used the word twenty-two times. It was one of the sparks that ignited the American Revolution, and we all know what happened after that.
Sarah Jane Marsh tells the story of Thomas Paine in a lively and entertaining style. Young readers will never guess that Thomas Paine is one of those “boring dead guys” of history. Edwin Fotheringham’s illustrations are just as energetic as the text, with Paine’s pen even appearing to set the page on fire at times. Scenes of the American Revolution have appeared in hundreds of picture books, but Fotheringham introduces some innovative touches to these scenes.
The back matter to the book provides more details about Thomas Paine’s life and his death (which also made me think, “Bless his heart”). It also includes a timeline of events during his lifetime and a bibliography.
When you know how the American Revolution ended, it’s easy to discount just how courageous it was for Thomas Paine to publish Common Sense. He could have been accused of treason and even executed for using the word “independence.”
You can learn more about Sarah Jane Marsh here. More information about Edwin Fotheringham is available here.
Despite the dangers we face when speaking truth to power, many of us are still committed to freedom of expression. Books about how the dangers were addressed at other times in history can help people of all ages learn nonviolent ways to defend that freedom. Let’s encourage young people to read them now, while they still can.