Voices: Reading age-appropriate books about sexual assault would have helped me as a kid. Today’s students deserve better.

Utah’s book banning laws are so drastic, we rank as one of the most extreme states in the nation.

We are the only state that requires all public schools to “dispose of” any copies of a book once it’s been banned by any three Utah school districts, and the law specifically prohibits selling or redistributing those books. So books once loved, read, and taught must be pulped, torn up, or burned.

I’m a mother of four doing the best I can for my own kids. But I shouldn’t be able to tell other parents which books are right for their kids, and they should not have the right to ban books that might be good — and even life-saving — for mine.

A few years ago, when our state began dealing with unprecedented challenges against books by and about historically underrepresented people, I wrote an open letter sounding warning.

Signed by many fellow Utah children’s writers, the crux of our argument was this: “Attempts to ban books about underrepresented kids sends them the message: You shouldn’t exist, your story doesn’t matter and we don’t want our kids to empathize with you. This is a dangerous message. In Utah, suicide is the leading cause of death for 10- to 17-year olds. More than ever, they need us to show them unequivocally: You matter, we love you and we want you here. All of you.”

Ever since, some adults have expressed shock about my personal participation because the challenges have also targeted books that deal with sex or assault. They say, “You don’t write those sorts of scenes in your young adult books, so how can you defend it?”

I want to directly address why I believe it’s catastrophically misguided to ban books from schools just for dealing with sex or assault.

As I recounted in my graphic novel memoir, “Friends Forever,” I was 13 years old the first time an adult man in Utah, who I should have been able to trust, put his hands on my body and treated me like a sexual object. My experience was far from unique. Most of my female friends in middle and high school faced similar assaults, and most of their experiences were far worse than mine, leading to lifelong consequences.

Reading age-appropriate books about sexual assault could have given me the ability to name what he did and empowered me to tell adults I trusted. Instead I was confused and told no one.

In Utah, nearly one-in-three women experiences some form of sexual violence in her life, and one-in-five girls are sexually abused before turning eighteen.

Rape “is the only violent crime for which Utah’s rate is higher than the national average,” and it has been for decades.

Several of the 23 books currently banned from all Utah schools wrestle with sexual trauma, such as award-winner “Damsel” by Elana K Arnold. Labeling books about abuse and rape as “pornography” is not only misleading, but it prevents teens from engaging with these important stories.

Protecting kids and teens from discussions about sex is not saving them from assaults. And books are not causing the assaults. But books can aid in clarifying what consensual touch and sex are and what they are not, and by so doing, help validate and heal survivors and even stop perpetrators.

A friend of mine is a high school teacher, and she has her freshmen classes read “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, a frequently banned book. Speak shows, in a non-graphic, compassionate way, a freshman girl’s experience after an upperclassman rapes her at a high school party. For many of the boys in my friend’s class, it was the first time they’d been asked to truly empathize with a female character, let alone a girl in this situation. One freshman boy wrote in his reaction paper: “I’m stuck. In “Speak,” the girl gets raped. But she was drunk. Before I read this book I would have said that if a girl is drinking and gets raped, it’s all her fault. But now I am not sure. I mean, she was stupid for drinking. But he shouldn’t have done that, no matter what.”

How did the experience of reading the book change that boy? Is he more likely now to speak up if he saw a guy hurt a girl? Is he less likely to hurt anyone himself? Books like “Speak” and “Damsel” have impacted millions of teenagers in the United States. Millions of teen boys may now see girls with more empathy than they did before.

What is the ripple effect of a book? How much good can it do?

In cultures where even discussion of sex is taboo, predators flourish. Comprehensive sex education doesn’t increase underage sexual activity, and banning books about sex and assault doesn’t eliminate sex and assault. The existence of sex in a book does not automatically make it pornography, and by diluting the meaning of that word we make it more difficult to protect kids.

In a time when most teens have a computer in their pockets with which they can access actual pornography 24/7, targeting library books is so misguided. Books are a gentle form of storytelling that offer context to complex problems and help readers examine them at their own pace in thoughtful ways.

It’s past time we hit the brakes on book banning. Even my innocent picture books about a kitten and unicorn have been inexplicably banned for being “sexually explicit” or for showing a male unicorn with “eyelashes.” If we ban any book that makes someone uncomfortable, there will be no books left.

No book, no teacher, no curriculum, no class, no idea can be exactly right for everyone. Rather than fearing any point of view that differs from our own, we can choose to help our kids become resilient and respectful critical thinkers. And books are one of our most powerful tools, especially when adults and young readers discuss stories together.

For many kids and teens in Utah, the library is the only place they have access to books. Let librarians and teachers do the jobs they have trained for and select a wide range of books for their communities. And let the kids read. Engaging with many kinds of stories helps prepare and protect them in a complex world.

Shannon Hale is the Utah Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and the author of 50 books for young readers, including “The Goose Girl,” “Real Friends” and Newbery-Honor winner “Princess Academy.”

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