I should add:
My basis for that comparison is that it strikes me as odd that people have no problem with their children learning about the horror and atrocities people visit on each other, but… write two little sentences about oral sex, and THE WORLD IS AT AN END!!! Holy fuck, people! What is it about blowjobs that gets us in such an uproar? Just because it’s an uncomfortable subject to some people? It should never ever be discussed because it’s s-e-x? Gimme a break!
Is it any dumber than not reading at all? I’m curious as to why some of those books are on a banned list. What better way to decide for myself whether they belong there or not than to read a few of them? I have read a number of them before including Catcher in the Rye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Of Mice and Men but there are others I hadn’t heard before. Is it any stupider than just grabbing what’s on the New York bestsellers list? That would have me reading drivel like The Davinci Code or some selfhelp-Dr.Phil garbage. If I can’t decide to read a book based on someone else’s judgement of the content, how exactly am I supposed to decide what book to read next? Choose a book that has an interesting cover? :rolleyes: I mean we all know that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.
I’d find it hard to beleive that the people who designed this program weren’t intentionally looking for a fight over this. Anyone who survived the Clinton presidency and the what…year and a half worth of blow job stories on the news, knows that Americans are obsessed with sex, and not in a good way.
As has been said earlier, if the intent of the program was really to expose people to different cultural authors, there are several whose works don’t contain fairly graphic representations of an act that a significant percentage of the population is going to find objectionable.
However, it is an advanced program, and I do remember reading material such as this in college. What probably should have happened (and based on the article I have no way of knowing if it did or not) is that the parents should have been warned about the content ahead of time and thus been given enough time to sit down with their child and discuss it in terms of the beleif system the parents have raised the child under. This probably would have smoothed over a lot of the rough spots of this whole ordeal, and take a lot of the wind out of the sails of those who did decide to complain.
This, however, is a silly, reasonable thing to do, and I’d be surprised if the school board or anyone else even considered it, instead prepping themselves for yet another banner news day.
You might be on to something. The book may have been assigned ostensibly to expose students to the sensibilities of another culture, but the resulting controversy may have been intentional. I imagine that Ann Dixon’s students are learning a great deal about book banning and censorship.
Am I the only person going ‘hunh?!’ on some of these banned titles? I don’t get it, do they all have sexual content that I have missed? I wouldn’t be too suprised, though. Someone once asked me if The Stand would be good reading for her son (then 11ish) and I was thinking yeah, why not. Then I read it again, paying attention to it a little more closely and decided that the correct answer was ‘no’ when I got to the sodomy by gun rape scene. I sort of forgot it was there because it is just one small part of a 1100+ page book and it is in context.
The thing about a decent book is that it is a decent book. I don’t think we can judge a book by page 243 more than we can judge it by its cover. I would be interested to know what anyone who has actually read the whole book thinks about it. I do think that banning books makes them more popular (and I always read locked threads just to see why) since I had never heard of this book until this thread discussing its banning. Unless this 17 year old has no friends, no money, no internet access, no library, and no curiosity…she’s heard/seen/done worse.
This may not be the same one, but here’s the American Library Association’s list of The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2001
Seeing this list brings up an interesting question for me. Specifically, I am wondering if there is any information out there that states the reason why a particular book was challenged. Too often, it seems, we are presented with these lists (not that you are doing it this way, mind you) in such a way as to feed our feelings of intellectual superiority both in how many of the titles we have already read and also because of some of the completely silly items on them (Where’s Waldo springs to mind, and folks also seem to have a terrible hard-on for Judy Blume). What I would be very interested to know is the reasoning behind these challenges (granted, some of them I can make a good guess at. Usually a sex thing).
I’m guessing Where’s Waldo is a problem because one of the women has perky nipples.
This (pdf) graph totals the reason for challenges. Explicit language and sex lead the way. Doesn’t explain Where’s Waldo though, does it?
There’s a link at the top of the page for "Challenges by Initiator, Institution, Type, and Year. All are PDF files.
That doesn’t really show anything, though. See the graph linked by TYM.
Here’s a list from a Christian Science Monitor article from 1998:
Further updates as developments warrant.
The Banned Books Resource Guide and the yearly update (which I designed this year) tell you where and when and why the book was banned and any related court rulings or community/school decisions. I don’t know if the info is collected online though; the resource guide is pretty big, like 200-some pages.
Right. What I am looking for is a cross-tab to the list of challenged books that gives the reason for the challenge. Like this:
Book1 Challenged for excessive use of the word pie.
Book2 Challenged for pervasive themes of Og smashing.
Book3 Challenged for Hi Opal.
Book4 Challenged because of stupid inside jokes.
You get the idea.
Yes, I know. It links to a list of the graphs for each year for each of the specific categories listed. That’s where that graph came from.
Holy crap. 200+ people actually challenged books because they considered them “anti-family”? What does that even mean?
Sorry, I really need to start quoting people, that was to Lute Skywatcher
Here. A nasty tan print on black background website, but it does seem to have a good list.
On the ALA site, they do give this list:
I am curious about the quotes on the posters offered on that site. Is the text reproduced elsewhere that is more easily read?
As a parent who’s read every Captain Underpants book six times over, I’ll just elaborate here:
“Offensive language” = Kid-giggling words like “potty,” “wedgie,” “poop,” and “pee-pee”.
“Modeling bad behavior” = The main characters like to rearrange letters on magnetic signs to spell funny sentences, pull pranks on their (tight-assed) teachers, and demonstrate how to rig toilet seats to spray ketchup when someone sits on one.
Frankly, any parent who can’t handle a kid being exposed to this level of mischief shouldn’t be parenting.