“They can make decisions and it’s important to allow them to do that, especially within the safe space of the library,” Green says. More than this, it is imperative to recognise that young people are “humans with agency”. And it’s being stocked in a school library, staffed by people who also genuinely care.” The school librarians he meets know their students “inside out”, he says warmly. The solution is simply to trust those who know young readers best: “A book from a mainstream publisher will have been through a very thorough editorial process by people who genuinely care. “And inevitably, when you have higher-profile people sharing some of those views, that furthers it as well.” They’ve been waiting for something to push back against it.” Social media has helped to amplify and embolden this cohort, he says. There’s a section of society that has been watching grudgingly as LGBT+ people gradually get a few more rights. “To be fair, trans people were warning about this. There is “absolutely” a link between growing homophobia and the raging culture war around transgender rights, he says.
He notes the unprecedented swathe of book bans across the US: “It dismays me that books so often are the target when there are genuinely harmful things online for young people, which seemingly just get away with it.” There is absolutely a link between growing homophobia and the raging culture war around transgender rights Green, who wrote his first story at the age of 12 on his gran’s typewriter, insists that a book offers a genuinely safe space to discuss scary or confusing content, compared with the “wild west of nightmares” awaiting young people online.
If I don’t reflect that, it won’t mean anything to them and that’s when they stop picking up books.” The reality is, young people at secondary school do swear, they do talk about sexual things with their friends. It’s a rollercoaster for everybody, and it doesn’t matter how you identify.”Īlongside the overt hostility to his books’ content, Green points out, are the more insidious complaints about swearing or sexual content: “It’s the ‘Won’t someone think of the children?’ mentality a convenient excuse for homophobia. “That whole process of fancying someone for the first time and falling in love. Those things sadly do happen, but it’s not the only story.”Īll students benefit from recognising that, ultimately, “we’re all going through exactly the same thing”, he argues. You can watch certain media and get the impression that they always end up dead at the end of the story, there’s homophobic attacks and it’s all misery. “All I ever set out to do was show kids – particularly LGBT+ kids – that it’s not all doom and gloom. Since Green’s 2017 debut, Noah Can’t Even – still the “most stolen” book from school libraries, he is reliably informed – his formula of madcap humour, Technicolor characters and soap-opera plotting has redrafted LGBT+ kids “as the heroes, having a happy ending”.
The banning was a brutal experience, he concedes, and “heartbreaking because it completely misrepresents what I’m trying to achieve in the books”. ‘The banning was heartbreaking because it completely misrepresents what I’m trying to achieve in the books’.
It’s a refreshingly simple ethic: “They recognise that people should be who they are and be free to live their lives and love who they love.” He contrasts the maturity with which today’s teenagers discuss gender and sexuality with his own coming-of-age in a rural town in Lincolnshire “where ‘gay’ wasn’t even used as a slur – I grew up in total ignorance of LGBT+ people, partly because of section 28. “They are passionate about building a world that is better, and they’re not going to stop,” he says. Barney’s activist passion is a thoroughly accurate reflection of the young people Green meets on a weekly basis, he explains. Less widely reported were the cards and letters Green received from young people across the country who wanted to support the students who had been denied their opportunity to talk about his books. The cancellation of Green’s school event in March by the Catholic archdiocese of Southwark prompted a wave of outrage from authors, parents and teaching unions, as well as warnings about a growing censorship of writing about diversity for younger readers.