A few days before Christmas, in an unprecedented gesture in the world of books, the Direction nationale de santé publique sent, through its regional offices, a notice to all education circles signed by the Deputy Minister of Health to ask them not to promote or offer for reading the book entitled The boy with upside down feetby Francois Blais.
A regional directorate, that of Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec, even went further by asking to remove the copies already present in educational settings.
The seriousness of the act committed by the authorities is dramatic: an organization emanating from the State, crowned with scientific credibility, took the initiative to target a book to condemn its reading and use in an educational environment. The French language is rich in words, some of which are heavy with meaning, but the one that comes to mind in this case is “censorship”.
Obviously, there is no prohibition, but the power of the gesture is of this order. The objective is clear: to distance this work from potential readers.
The motives alleged by health authorities are troubling. In a biased and simplistic argument, it evokes the promotion of suicide and the methods to achieve it. It is a reductive and heartbreaking interpretation of a rich and nuanced, inspiring and profound work that must be taken as a whole. We strongly refute this caricatural understanding of the book, and we are concerned about the perverse effect of the note from Public Health which imposes an unequivocal and dangerous interpretation key. In doing so, the authorities promote what they denounce. Of all the professionals who have worked on the publication of the book and of all the critics who have spoken of it with unanimous praise so far, none have seen it as a threat to public health. This is a work of fiction, not an essay or a documentary. It has sensitive aspects, certainly, but not deadly.
In fact, the authorities cite, among other things, the causes of the author’s death for the purpose of their demonstration. They thus authorize themselves to do something that we, the publishing house, for ethical reasons, we have refrained from doing in the promotion of the book: widely disseminate what led the author to his death. The content of the note contravenes the “good practices” it prescribes. We are deeply saddened and disturbed.
The boy with upside down feet must be read for what it is: a book, a literary work, a fiction which, like thousands of novels, is played between the fundamentals of existence: love, camaraderie, death and life.
This whole affair is disturbing in more ways than one.
How can public health authorities justify such forceful intervention against one of the thousands of books published each year? Do they have the luxury of opening a new selection service for good and bad books? We thought those times were over.
How can they justify replacing the educational competence of teachers, librarians, booksellers specializing in children’s literature?
For our part, we trust those who have the daily practice of dialogue between the literary worlds and young readers, and who know how to accompany them in their growth in all respects.
It will be understood that we cannot remain silent in the face of such a slippage that is detrimental to the work concerned, to the memory of its author, to the publishing house and to the book chain.
We hope that in 2023, a year which promises to be still turbulent on the epidemiological level, Public Health will return to microbes, leaving educators the task of discerning in order to educate, writers the freedom to create and publishers the freedom to distribute their works.