Bought a Banned Book Lately?

If the political climate is any indication, this is a week to ponder. It's National Banned Books Week.

It is one of life's ironies that the same people who are often most vociferous about their own First Amendment rights are the same voices who would deny that same right to others. When one of our state universities selected Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich for their freshman summer reading assignment, there was a public outcry from some very angry parents. On the other hand, Atlas Shrugged is a part of the business school curriculum in some of our colleges and universities because an area bank gave them millions of dollars if they'd put it there. The idea, the bank executives said, was to bring forth debate on the "ethical underpinnings" of capitalism. That might also be said of Nickel and Dimed.

Those university book lists are wonderful resources for forays into critical thinking. This year's selection, Picking Cotton, must have sparked some interesting discussions.

Here, according to the American Library Association, is a list of the most frequently challenged books of 2009:

1. “TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs
2. “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: Homosexuality
3. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide
4. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group
6. “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
7. “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult
Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence
8. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
9. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
10. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Black Beauty was banned by the Apartheid-based South African government for almost 50 years before they discovered it wasn't a book about a black woman. An anniversary edition of The Diary of Anne Frank was banned from being taught in Virginia public schools in January, 2010. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was also banned in January, 2010, because the author had the same name as an obscure Marxist and they didn't bother to check to see whether or not it was the same guy. Who was "they" in this instance?

Hello, Texas Board of Education. (You know, the same group that is rewriting textbooks to make them more to their liking.)

Also banned this year--this one at a California elementary school--was the new Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary because of its "oral sex" definition.

Several police associations attempted to have Caldecott Medal winner Sylvester and the Magic Pebble removed from school libraries because the police were portrayed by pigs. Sylvester, incidentally, is a donkey. For that matter, he might be a liberal Democrat.

I was curious about what guidelines are used in children's libraries and found that the Library Bill of Rights includes a section on Free Access to Libraries by Minors. What it says is that you can control what your kid reads, but not what someone else's kid chooses.

That freedom stuff is tricky, huh? But doesn't it beat the alternative?

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill