Merepeka Raukawa-Tait: Book ban calls simplistic

I enjoy nothing better than taking myself off to bed early with a good book. When you have been brought up with books, both my mother and father were avid readers, you acquire a love of the written word.
Mrs Sandilands my English teacher at high school played an important role too. She made English come alive and it's really the only subject I was ever interested in. So books have always had a special place in my home and I never throw any out, preferring to reread and repeatedly dip in and out of them time and time again.
We all have our own taste in books too, nothing wrong with that. Can you imagine if we were all to read the same books? Now that would be boring. I'm curious about Ian Wishart's forthcoming book Breaking Silence: The Kahui Case. I want to read it.
The book tells Macsyna King's story of the murder of her twin babies. There has been a hue and cry this week from concerned citizens about the book. Loud protests calling on bookshops to ban selling it. Some shops that don't have the guts to tell the concerned citizens where to go will probably comply.
But I can't understand why. Bookshops over the years have probably chosen not to sell certain books but this would rarely have been as a result of public pressure. Since when has the public decided that because they despise a person and what she represents and stands for in their eyes, they can forcefully call for a book to be banned from being sold in the usual outlets?
I am curious to read Macsyna's story. In my work I have read the stories of men and women who have killed children, although admittedly not in a book published by a seasoned journalist. Usually court transcripts and other official reports and the most interesting have always been when the accused themselves "find their voice".
These stories are sad and depressing to read and as is always the case, nothing is ever what it first appears. I suspect the good citizens have some preconceived idea of what Macsyna's story will reveal and can't be bothered reading about it.
They will say they just don't want Wishart's book to be sold in bookshops, but I believe they just don't want Macsyna to tell her story.
Perhaps they think she'll be painted "lily white". Hardly. For some of us we need to know what makes a person harm, kill or stand by and let children be killed. In Macsyna's case, her own little twins.
Requesting bookshops to ban selling Wishart's book won't stop children in New Zealand being killed. They continue to be disposable. You can throw them out in the trash, as has happened in the last few days in Auckland.
And the good citizens who will feel pleased they have done something really worthwhile, they're in fact the very people who need to read the book. They need to open their eyes and demand that this country get real about addressing the core problems that cause children to be killed. Asking bookshops not to sell a book is simplistic and stupid. It isn't the answer to stopping children from being murdered.
We don't need any more good citizens but we do need well-informed citizens. Those who want to know the truth, unpalatable as it may be, and are then prepared to constructively work to tackle the almost insurmountable problem of child killing in New Zealand.