Welcome to banned book week.  Please read a book or two from the list.

Some of them I do not under­stand.  Some of them, I have never heard of before and had to look up on Ama­zon.  A few comments:

A few of the books I can log­i­cally see why they might be inap­pro­pri­ate for schools: the Madonna pic­to­graphic Sex book and The Anarchist's Cook­book, for instance.

The Choco­late War: about a kid who would not sell choco­late for a school club.  Oh, no–no polit­i­cal agenda there.  We don't want to give kids the idea that they have the option NOT to sell candy for the school.

Var­i­ous kid's hor­ror sto­ries: As I under­stand it, they are not too much dif­fer­ent than spooky camp­fire sto­ries.  “When they got home, they found a MEAT HOOK embed­ded in the side of the car!” 

Var­i­ous social books: Daddy's Room­mate, Heather has Two Mom­mies, My Brother Sam is Dead, etc.  These seem like they should be avail­able to any­one who wants (or NEEDS) them.  Although it seems to me that kid that might be in a sit­u­a­tion where they would NEED a book about a gay fam­ily prob­a­bly has an open enough home life that they could talk to their par­ents about it (and prob­a­bly already have the book and do not need it from the library).  On the other hand, those books should be avail­able for any­one who might be interested.

Harry Pot­ter: HUH?!  These are best-sellers and pretty well writ­ten children's books.  “NOTHING WITH OCCULT THEMES FOR YOU, LITTLE JOHNNY!”  While we're at it, let's ban Dun­geons and Drag­ons and pre­vent all kids from watch­ing reruns of Bewitched on Nick At Night.

Tom Sawyer, Huck­le­berry Finn: Nig­ger.  Nig­ger, nig­ger, nig­ger, nig­ger.  I would be will­ing to bet kids hear more of “the N-word” from rap music than they would from these books.  Actu­ally, I never got around to read­ing these and prob­a­bly will do so soon.

A Wrin­kle in Time: I loved this book as a kid!  This is one of the first books that actu­ally started me think­ing about the forth dimen­sion and physics.

Lord of the Flies: Why wasn't this banned at my school?  They forced me to read it.  I do not remem­ber whether I actu­ally did do so, or just bought the Cliff Notes.  Maybe I'll just look up my junior-high teacher and bash his head in with a rock.  Well, maybe not–he was a really cool Eng­lish­man, despite the toupee.

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Tagged as: banned