In Stephen King’s It, all of the kids get naked in the sewers after beating IT for the first time. Then they have a gang bang.
Hmmm, maybe you better not bring that one up after all…
IIRC, while not really a childrens book, Battle Royale by Takami Koushun contains a scene where a female character uses nudity to distract two boys bent on killing her. It also describes her as having been a prostitute in the past. I’m not sure, but I think all the children were fifteen at the time.
There is a Banned Book list? Is this for school librarys or some such? Who choses which books get banned and how?
:smack: Just noticed I posted as Leechboy. Sorry 'bout that, above question is from me.
There was a thread kicking around here within the last week about books that had been banned somewhere, at some time. There was an online site that had a pretty extensive list but I don’t have the link. No doubt some smart person will supply it soon.
Anyway, the list in this case wasn’t for librarians or whatever to know which books to ban, it was more so people could laugh at the ignorance of would-be banners.
Naah…“Ball Gags” still count as clothing.
This is the one that I immediately thought of. I can vividly recall reading this as a young boy and being quite… stirred by the idea of the girl bathing right there in the fountain.
Whoa, which part was that? It’s been so long since I’ve read that book!
leechbabe, and anyone else who is interested:
This was the thread that discussed “challenged” books, and the reasons:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=222004
The link in the OP will take you to a list of such books.
Darkhold also supplies a link to a similar site: http://title.forbiddenlibrary.com/
Thank you for posting this. I loved that book, but could never remember what it was called. 
Yeah, I definitely don’t remember that one either…!
I’m thinking that Cervaise and Ranchoth were joking there… Or maybe it’s all part of a nefarious plan to get A Wrinkle in Time onto banned-books lists, thereby guaranteeing that unprecedented numbers of kids will read it.
By the way, in Lord of the Rings, in addition to the scene after the Barrow-Downs, there’s also a bath scene earlier in the book, featuring Frodo, Sam, Pippen, and copious amounts of splashing. And Gandalf was sent back “naked” into the world after his fight with the Balrog, but that doesn’t mean quite the same thing.
Heinlein’s The Door into Summer is sort of on the borderline of the juveniles, but two of the main characters are nudists.
Don’t know if this is a children’s book so much as a “young adult/teen” book, but * Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret * (written by Judy Blume)has a part where Margaret stands in front of a mirror naked and examines herself.
Naaaw…My nefarious plan to get kids to read involves slipping heroin into batches of book-binding glue. >:)
I own a reprint of the 1899 original text, along with reproductions of the original Helen Bannermanart, and there’s definitely no nudity in The Story of Little Black Sambo. Perhaps you misremember… or is this another version of the story you’re talking about?
I think that HP scene, its not just coincidental - part of the point is to have harry embarassed by Myrtle for whatever reason. There’s other things in that book that make it slightly more of a teenage and less of a child’s book.
So there’s two questions: is it normal to use nudity for comic effect otherwise important, and is it normal when a character is just in a situation where its natural.
Q: Why do Battle Royale, It and Lord of the Flies have in common?
A: Apparently they’re all children’s books 
I’m not sure why you should need any references at all, really. Your friend is the one who’s weird for feeling so uncomfortable about it.
But then, I’ve been living in Japan for too long. Folks here take baths together all the time. Most little girls bathe with Daddy (and boys with Mommy) until age 6 or 7. Is that weird?
*In Stephen King’s It, all of the kids get naked in the sewers after beating IT for the first time. Then they have a gang bang.
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That was rather… disturbing. I mean King had to sit there and think about 10-year-olds having sex, and then he had to write it. Just a bit too creepy.
Ah, Judy Blume…the most famous hard-core kiddy porn writer of her time. I forgot all about her.
Also in Margaret (or maybe it was another Blume book) the girl spends a lot of time touching her “special place” – and she doesn’t know what it’s called, until her sex ed teacher brings up the subject of masturbation.
But my favorite Blume novel was Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, about a young boy who scams a pair of binoculars out of his parents, so he can do a little peeping-Tom action on the lady next door. (He tells his parents he’s a birdwatcher, which, if you apply British slang to it, isn’t really a lie, right??)