This is "Banned Books Week"

[mebeforee]

I think I have the first of the sequels to the Giver, but I haven't been able to read it yet. I have such a long 'to-read' list, and everyone in my family is an avid reader so I try to balance what other people ask me about with the things I'd like to read first, lol. Hopefully I'll get a chance to read the sequel soon... Gathering Blue, I think it's called.

[wildcatgrrl]

I don't think there's homosexuality in the diary itself, but supposedly before her family went into hiding, Anne had a female friend from school that she had intense feelings for. As far as I'm aware there wasn't any confirmed physical relationship, but it seemed to be one of those early friendships that dances the border between platonic and romantic.

IIRC, she said that she'd asked the friend to compare or touch each other's breasts as a sign of friendship or some such. She also wrote that art depicting the female form sent her into ecstasies from the beauty. I have a copy of that book around here somewhere, but from memory it was something like that.

And banning books sucks and makes me angry.

[wtfrenchtoast]

Do 'the Giver'! It remains as one of the best books I've ever read, but it's definitely written for children. I love that book.

Oh I love The Giver. That's got to be one of my favorite childhood books of all time. I can't believe it's been banned!

[Creaky Mom]

There's nothing to ban from Twilight except bad writing and misogyny. Instead it should be held up as a model on how NOT to write. IMO

As much as I'd like to see Poor Sarah's books banned, I don't support banning books. However, they too, would be in the How Not to Write category.

[mebeforee]

As much as I'd like to see Poor Sarah's books banned, I don't support banning books. However, they too, would be in the How Not to Write category.

Can I ask what Poor Sarah's books are? I'm overly familiar with Twilight, and they really are terrible, but I haven't heard about Poor Sarah...

[Bethella]

Can I ask what Poor Sarah's books are? I'm overly familiar with Twilight, and they really are terrible, but I haven't heard about Poor Sarah...

Poor Sarah is Poor Sarah Maxwell- she wrote the Moody books (Summer with the Moodys, Autumn with the Moodys, Winter with the Moodys, Spring with the Moodys, Summer Days with the Moodys, Autumn Days with the Moodys and Winter Days with the Moodys) While I have not forced myself to read them, they are notorious for their bad writing and for their popularity with the fundy crowd.

[Maggie Mae]

Poor Sarah is Poor Sarah Maxwell- she wrote the Moody books (Summer with the Moodys, Autumn with the Moodys, Winter with the Moodys, Spring with the Moodys, Summer Days with the Moodys, Autumn Days with the Moodys and Winter Days with the Moodys) While I have not forced myself to read them, they are notorious for their bad writing and for their popularity with the fundy crowd.

The titles alone put me to sleep.

[Creaky Mom]

I hear the snoring.

[Lady_M]

Poor Sarah is Poor Sarah Maxwell- she wrote the Moody books (Summer with the Moodys, Autumn with the Moodys, Winter with the Moodys, Spring with the Moodys, Summer Days with the Moodys, Autumn Days with the Moodys and Winter Days with the Moodys) While I have not forced myself to read them, they are notorious for their bad writing and for their popularity with the fundy crowd.

The collected titles of the Moody books sound like some sort of parody.

[mebeforee]

Poor Sarah is Poor Sarah Maxwell- she wrote the Moody books (Summer with the Moodys, Autumn with the Moodys, Winter with the Moodys, Spring with the Moodys, Summer Days with the Moodys, Autumn Days with the Moodys and Winter Days with the Moodys) While I have not forced myself to read them, they are notorious for their bad writing and for their popularity with the fundy crowd.

Aha! Yes, I've heard of them after all, and I have read some excerpts that were so completely boring that I couldn't be bothered to even consider them as real writing.

Seriously, if fundies want some wholesome kid's series, they should just read the Boxcar Children. They're inoffensive and at least mildly interesting.

[Lady_M]

Thanks for the timely reminder, FlorenceHamilton! I feel compelled to post a few quotes about book censorship, just 'cause I'm in the mood to share:

"If your library is not 'unsafe,' it probably isn't doing its job."

-- John Berry, III, Library Journal, October 1999

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education."

-- Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

"Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot."

-- Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, American playwright (1888-1953)

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

-- Mark Twain

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"

-- Kurt Vonnegut, author

Happy Banned Books Week, everyone!

:P

Love these!

Checked out the banned book list from the ALA article, and I was surprised to find The Lord of the Rings on the banned classics list. I was also having a sort of face-palm moment about the inclusion of Fahrenheit 451 on the 2000-2009 list.

[Guest Anonymous]

Love these!

Checked out the banned book list from the ALA article, and I was surprised to find The Lord of the Rings on the banned classics list. I was also having a sort of face-palm moment about the inclusion of Fahrenheit 451 on the 2000-2009 list.

Funny you should mention "Fahrenheit 451". In his preface to the book, Ray Bradbury lamented that the threat was even more insidious than banning or burning literature. His point was that a book's fangs could be drawn by either expurgating or bowdlerizing the hell out of it.

[Sydney Fox]

Do 'the Giver'! It remains as one of the best books I've ever read, but it's definitely written for children. I love that book.

My older daughter has been re-reading this lately and we've had a great time discussing it. I highly recommend it as well.

Our library puts brightly coloured paper slips in all the banned books to mark them and my daughter loves roaming around, looking for them.

[Katydid]

Thanks for the heads up! I need to head to my library tomorrow. I usually try to read a banned book during this week every year.

[Trynn]

As far as I can recall, The Diary of Anne Frank mentioned things in such a way that people took it as homosexuality, but I interpreted as Anne being curious about the female body. Especially when you consider that Anne was going through puberty at the time when she was in hiding, and not around any other girls her age to compare and contrast, like everyone else does.

(I'm not saying there's anything wrong about homosexuality, just that I don't think it's in there.)

Oh, and Anne describes the female genitals. We can't have our children reading that, because then they might know their own bodies, and that might lead to.... um, knowing how to describe a problem to their doctor?

[kamcho_papio]

Books like Nickel and Dimed or The Jungle are frequently challenged in the United States because they go against our myth of rugged individualism and instead might give kids ideas that a social safety net is necessary and that might lead to socialism or communism. Any portrayal of people suffering without "deserving" it by being lazy or non-Christian or whatever won't promote the idea that poor people deserve to be poor.

In addition to this, I think Barbara Ehrenreich talks quite openly about smoking pot in this book, although it's been a decade since I read it.

[synchroswimr]

I'm going to read "Of Mice and Men" this week. I haven't read Harry Potter, so I have that on hold at the library as well.

[yewnique]

Seriously, if fundies want some wholesome kid's series, they should just read the Boxcar Children. They're inoffensive and at least mildly interesting.

No, no, no. Those children do all sorts of things independently, without adult supervision.

I have read only one Boxcar Children book (the first one), and personally, I don't like it.

[mebeforee]

I don't particularly like them either, mostly because the gender roles are pretty outright and that annoys me. But I read them when I was a little kid and so did my brother, so it seems like something that people planning to limit their reading could get behind. :-\

[skrmom]

My son is a high school senior and in an Advanced Placement English class. I had to sign a waiver givng my permission for him to be able to read 'more mature' books-many of which are banned books.

[O Latin]

One of my mom's favorite stories to tell whenever banned books come up is about when I was in seventh grade and tried to check out a book from the school library that was designated as a ninth graders only book. The librarian said she could call my mom and get permission and I was like, "whatever." It was for some class assignment where we just had to read a book, so I wasn't dead set on this particular book. They called my mom and she proudly told them that I was allowed to read any book I wanted. This was ten years ago and she still loves to repeat the story. (If I recall correctly, the book was Angela's Ashes, which I think was actually too old for me at the time because it didn't hold my interest and I never made it past the first chapter. I gave it another try a few years later, though, and I loved it.)

We have a friend who is the librarian at a junior high school and he gets so frustrated with parents trying to dictate what books should be in the library. He says that if a parent wants to regulate what their individual child reads, that's their business but they shouldn't try to resist other kids' access to books.

[lilah]

Almost all my most treasured childhood reads are on this list, and some of my favorite books to this day.

Also, Goosebumps? Is that series even still in print? It seem irrelevant for the modern day... I was reading those in the early nineties.

-_-

You would be suprised. I work as an elementary school librarian and goosebumps remain popular. And yes they are still in print. Many of my students love scary stories for the thrill of being afriad.

[Kitty]

It's times like these where I like to tell the story of how I got kicked out of church at 13 for reading Harry Potter.

Okay so it is totally a story and I wasn't kicked out, my mother ragequit upon hearing that I wasn't supposed to be reading Harry Potter. Last straw, though. My dad and I just never went back, and my sister stayed with the youth groups for a while and then stopped caring.

[Trynn]

It's times like these where I like to tell the story of how I got kicked out of church at 13 for reading Harry Potter.

Okay so it is totally a story and I wasn't kicked out, my mother ragequit upon hearing that I wasn't supposed to be reading Harry Potter. Last straw, though. My dad and I just never went back, and my sister stayed with the youth groups for a while and then stopped caring.

I still want to hear this story... because that seems rather harsh...

Ah yes, Harry Potter. I remember getting the books from the library and falling in love with them, hiding them under my bed, sneaking them out of the bookstore so my parents wouldn't see them (I paid for them first) the elaborate plans that went into obtaining and hiding the movies... eventually my parents decided I could read the books but not watch the movies. That totally worked....

My parents aren't even the most conservative. One of my teachers once told me that when her parents found out she was reading Nancy Drew, they burned the book. Today this woman is super picky about what she allows in her school (it was a one room school) but I'm 99% sure that she still reads Nancy Drew....

[Kitty]

I still want to hear this story... because that seems rather harsh...

Ah yes, Harry Potter. I remember getting the books from the library and falling in love with them, hiding them under my bed, sneaking them out of the bookstore so my parents wouldn't see them (I paid for them first) the elaborate plans that went into obtaining and hiding the movies... eventually my parents decided I could read the books but not watch the movies. That totally worked....

My parents aren't even the most conservative. One of my teachers once told me that when her parents found out she was reading Nancy Drew, they burned the book. Today this woman is super picky about what she allows in her school (it was a one room school) but I'm 99% sure that she still reads Nancy Drew....

Okay then! I love telling this story :) This was about 7 years ago, so my memory isn't perfect.

So, a bit of background information, this was a pretty conservative Southern Baptist church. I'm not sure why my parents started going, because honestly they are horrible at the whole Southern Baptist thing. They drink, smoke, and mingle with members of the opposite sex when the other isn't around. Quelle horreur! My mom got pretty pissed off at all this, but kept going anyway for some reason. On top of that, my sister and I had normal-people lives at home and school, but had to hide a lot of stuff when we got to church. Stuff like two-piece bathing suits, Linkin Park CDs, Harry Potter books, and boyfriends.

So Sister and I went to a camp out in the mountains (the church is in coastal Virginia). This camp happened to take place the week before the release of Half-Blood Prince. I was excited and fangirled about it any chance I got, and that was the first time that I really became aware that people were THAT uptight over Harry Potter. One girl even said that her mother let her watch anything with sex and violence in it, but any fantasy elements were a no-no. Yeah, wtf? Compare Harry Potter, that has NO sexual content (unless you count the kissing, but that happens once in Order of the Phoenix) fantasy violence ("Avada Kedavra" "*dead*") but magic that consists of made-up Latin/Greek/Aramaic and waving wands around. Yeah, ooookay, I see what the better choice is for a 13 year old girl :roll: :roll:

When I got home that weekend after camp, I finished HBP in about 4 hours. And it was good. My mother happened to mention my excitement over the book's release at church the next morning, and the other church ladies gasped and clutched their pearls. Heathen working woman who outearns her husband, and has POLITICAL OPINIONS and MALE FRIENDS *OF HER OWN*, lets her eighth-grader daughter read Harry Potter?! What is this devilry?! My mother ranted about this on the way home from church.

I left in earnest after one youth group night in which I was preached to about abortion. I was still officially pro-life then, but the wheels were beginning to turn and I swear to Notch the little handouty thingy ACTUALLY SAID "My sister is in trouble... she wants an abortion and I think my parents are gonna get her one!" I quit after that and didn't even return for church services until Christmas of that year. And that was the last time I ever set foot in that church.

*I'm no longer even Christian, but even back then I couldn't stand Christian music. I wasn't allowed to listen to the metal I was starting to get into, and I didn't even know Christian metal existed at that point, so I thought all Christian music was either bubblegum "Jesus is my boyfriend" pop or crappy "Jesus is my gay lover" soft rock.

But back on topic, all of the required reading lists at my high school came from the "banned books" lists. I never understood why any of them were banned. I'm okay with Twilight being banned because of all the misogyny, but in reality it was probably banned because of OMG MAGIC D: