Via Yves. (in Vietnam) @ Flickr.
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Banned Books Week is afoot! BBW is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has a bunch of resources about banned books and challenges to library materials. Here is the list of the ten most frequently challenged books of 2008. The children’s book And Tango Makes Three was number one.
An interactive map at BannedBooksWeek displays details about over 120 book challenges around the country between 2007 and 2009. It’s a fascinating web of attempted censorship, often in the name of “protecting children.” Dangerous things happen when the marginalized tell their stories and/or injustice is exposed.
Also, when children read fictional tales about witchcraft or references to sex organs.
Don’t make the mistake I just did and do an Amazon search for And Tango Makes Three – some of those reviews are hateful.
I always thought Banned Books Week was more of a historical thing than a current thing. Silly me for thinking people we past objecting to…well, pretty much everything.
I’m not surprised about Tango since I’d been discussing it with my bro lately, and discovered that he doesn’t approve, which is sad for me.
His Dark Materials is such a great trilogy, and I think it’s a really nice way to talk about sex with 10-11-12 yo kids.
THE KITE RUNNER???
I particularly like that it is listed as “unsuited for age group” because I have always seen it in the adult section of the bookstore.
Turns out I’ve read 26 of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-1999.
Appropriately, it being banned books week, a friend had a baby yesterday and named her Harper.
“Unsuited for age group.” Yeah, because all 8-year-olds (or whoever) are exactly the same, developmentally and intellectually. Sheesh, these days, parents should be happy their kids are reading at all, not to mention reading books that might make them think. What about trusting your child to make his/her own choices, and fostering open communication so that the kid can come to you with questions about a difficult/confusing book? I’m not a parent, but I don’t remember my parents ever taking issue with anything I read, or restricting anything, so it does work.
@Funnyface: I kind of love your friend for that.
There is a lot of discussion in the library world about the ethical responsibilities of librarians especially whether or not librarians should consider what use our patrons have for the information they are asking for and if they could use that information to harm themselves or others.
Here is a slightly academic example: http://www.sir.arizona.edu/lso/archives/symposium06/papers/DaleSavage.pdf
I am in the free access to information camp; mainly because it’s easier and I don’t feel qualified to act as a human filter. That being said, I understand people’s desire to control who has access to information about things like how to build a bomb or commit suicide, etc.
Book-banning on the other hand has always struck me as puritanical zeal run amok.
I’m of the opinion that no books should be banned (yes that is a bit libertarian but I feel that people should be aware of terrible books such as Mein Kampf, for example, in order to understand history and record it, if you ban something like that it gives it an even more malignant power. Plus it’s obvious that once you start banning books, you end up banning things for the most bizarre reasons).
That said if i could ban one book it would be Jack Keroauc’s On The Road on the grounds that it is badly written and full of the sort of adolescent arrested development that allows predominantly but not always male undergraduates to think that they make sense while on speed.
@emilyanne: I’ve never read On the Road, but I loved the description of it as “badly written and full of the sort of adolescent arrested development that allows predominantly but not always male undergraduates to think that they make sense while on speed.”
Based on the people I’ve seen who love it, that’s pretty much what I imagined it would be, I have to admit, and also seems like a fitting description of a certain literary subgenre in general…
@emilyanne:
On the Road is a lot like Mein Kampf; a historical record of how women were treated in the 50’s.
bellacoker, good point – it’s still badly written though….
truth.
I was watching some fluff tv show (needed to unwind) and it depicted the zeal with which a group of parents in a school community wanted to ban books – as a result of one of the parents seeing her child reading “Madame Bovary” for English..
so the book banning begins, and becomes more and more absurd, until the instigator parent walks into the principals office wanting to ban the bible…
One of the great ironies of my upbringing is that while my folks had TV and movie watching on lockdown, I was always allowed to read anything I wanted to. The wife and I have already decided that’s how we’re gonna roll.
so the book banning begins, and becomes more and more absurd, until the instigator parent walks into the principals office wanting to ban the bible…
There’s a legit case to be made if you’re banning books to ban the Bible. There is a ton of ill shit in the Bible; incest, murder, fornication, the list goes on forever.
Challenging the bible is a no-brainer if you’re into book banning.
So true, Hill Rat. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I’m always particularly amused/annoyed that so many people who want to ban particular books haven’t bothered to read them.
Book-banners, you don’t deserve books. Stick to Chick tracts.