Commentary: Banned Books

In celebration of "Banned Books Week," I took a look at a collection of book lists from the past five years or so. I have to say that I think I understand why people would try to get books banned from school libraries. I don't necessarily AGREE with those efforts - especially when they try to ban books like The Diary of Anne Frank - the most significant first-person account of the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

And, yes, people are STILL trying to get The Diary of Anne Frank banned. In 2010. On the grounds that it's a bit lewd and endorses homosexual behavior. Even I find that kinda backwards - and I'm actually a bit of a prude.

Anyway, I found a couple of other standout entries from the banned book lists of the recent past.

2006: I'm completely mystified by the continued efforts to ban the Harry Potter series from public schools, but the 2006 entry from the above website has this one little tidbit that I can' leave without commentary. So the book was targeted for possible removal from the Wilsona School District along with twenty three other books. One book had "an unsavory hero who made a bad role model for children; another was about a warlock, which they said was inappropriate; and others were books with which they were unfamiliar and didn’t know whether they promoted good character or conflicted with textbooks" [emphasis added].

It's one thing to attempt to ban a book that you've read and found unsuitable for your children. It's another thing to target a book that you've never read, but has a bad reputation. It's SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY to target a book simply because you don't know what it's about.

Oh, and proof that they didn't know what they were doing: "Rejected titles included three bilingual Clifford the Big Red Dog books [and] Disney’s Christmas Storybook."

OOH, SHOCKING!!!

2006: Someone tried to ban Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 for “discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, ‘dirty talk,’ references to the Bible, and using God’s name in vain.” Which is totally missing the point of the book, but... whatever.

The REAL joke here, of course, is the banning of a book about the dangers of banning books. It's delicious, crunchy, toffee-crusted irony at its finest.

2007: The father of two teenage boys requested the city government fine a library in Bentonville, Arkansas, for allowing The Whole Lesbian Sex Book onto the public access shelves. He asked for $10,000 for each boy.

Here's one case of censorship I thought I could get behind. See, I'm mainly opposed to censorship on an artistic level - blocking material the creator deems relevant to the experience of a piece of art is destructive to the imagination as a whole. Now there is NO WAY a couple of teenage boys would be interested in The Whole Lesbian Sex Book for the purpose the author intended, so I don't blame the father for getting a little indignant that the library would allow his children to check out what, for their intents and purposes, would be smut.

However, nowhere does it say the children actually REQUESTED this book, only that the father wanted to keep that book out of their hands.

Oh, well. At least somebody "thinks of the children."

2008: Librarians in an Oregon High School had to restrict access to The Book of Bunny Suicides :

I guess some mother was so offended by this book that she threatened to straight up burn it rather than return it to the library. I mean, yeah, I'm all against animal cruelty and mutilation and whatever, but vandalism's a crime, too.

Oh, and in a pure fit of 21st century anti-Puritanism, the library soon after received 24 donated copies of The Book of Bunny Suicides. That just goes to show that centralized censorship is not only bad for the intellectual well-being of a community, but it just plain doesn't work, either.

And here's my favorite:

2005: A Montana middle school received complaints that the book On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God: Further Confessions of Georgia Nicholson was dangerous, not because of the content, but because "an unstable person seeing a girl reading the book might think from the title that the girl is promiscuous and stalk her."

So the next time you're reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and someone asks you to take a look at their car, now you'll know that person's unstable.