Children's Books discussion
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The History of Book Banning
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www.publishersweekly.com
"As a historian of literacy, I coined the phrase “the literacy myth” to identify, explain, and criticize the former consensus that reading and writing (and sometimes arithmetic) are sufficient in themselves, regardless of degree of proficiency or social context, to transform the lives of individuals and their societies.
In late 2021, I’m confronted with an unprecedented “new illiteracy”—another version of the ever-shifting literacy myth. The historical continuities are shattered by, first, the call to ban books in innumerable circumstances; second, the banning of written literature without reading it; and, third, calls for burning books. This constitutes a movement for illiteracy, not a campaign for approved or selective uses of reading and writing.
Banning books from curricula, erasing them from reading lists, and ridding them from library shelves has mid-20th-century precedents; the burn books movement does not. Nor does the banning of books without censors reading them to identify their offending content.
Banning books is an effort, unknowingly, to resurrect the early modern Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation against both radical Catholics and early Protestants, which attempted to halt unauthorized reading, including curtailing the ability of individuals to read for themselves. Then seen as a “protest,” individual access to written or printed texts was perceived as threatening in ways that controlled oral reading to the “masses” by a priest or other leader was not. It enforced orthodoxy and countered both collective and individual autonomy.
The similarities and differences between today and a half millennium ago are powerful. Both movements are inseparable from ignorance, rooted in fear, and expressed in both legal and extralegal struggles for control and power. Both are inextricably linked to other efforts to restrict free speech, choice and control over one’s body, political and civil rights, public protests, and more.
Once led by the established church, censorship crusades to ban written materials of all sorts are today supercharged by right-wing politicians, radical evangelicals, and supporting activists. In the eyes of some, these politicians are opportunistic.
Despite media comments and condemnation by professors, teachers, librarians, and First Amendment attorneys, these issues are poorly understood. Parents of school-age children are confused. The young, supposedly in the name of their protection, face the greatest threat to intellectual and psychological development. That danger is most severe for the racially and gender diverse, who see themselves being erased or banned.
This movement harkens back well beyond the “ban books” and “read banned books” movements of the 1950s and ’60s, with their obsession with J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, or Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Even Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who tried to use the U.S. Postal Service to limit the circulation of obscene literature and destroyed books, did not aim to empty libraries.
Compare this history to efforts in Virginia to ban Nobel Prize– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison’s classic novels The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Or Texas school districts’ ban of young adult novelist Ashley Hope Perez’s award-winning Out of Darkness, based on a single paragraph taken out of context. In all these cases, the new illiterates either do not, or cannot, read the supposedly offending texts.
Perhaps the most revealing example is Republican Texas state representative Matt Krause’s campaign stunt of releasing a list of 850 books that he wants to be “investigated” for some unspecified violations. He demands school superintendents provide him with lists of texts that deal with certain subjects relating to race and sex, a probably illegal fishing expedition.
Krause alleges that these titles may violate Texas HB 3979, known as the “critical race theory law.” Almost none of the 850 books have anything, directly or indirectly, to do with critical race theory. What is immediately apparent from a look at Krause’s list is that it is compiled from an internet search of keywords. It is also organized by publication date, which has no relationship to the content. A numerical bias favors the most recent years. Once again we find the new illiteracy: no familiarity with actual contents of the listed volumes and no concern to examine them directly. Sixteenth-century orthodox Catholics and Anthony Comstock would turn over in their graves.
Previous banning movements did not overtly concentrate on race, aim to empty libraries, or associate so closely with one political party. The people behind these movements prided themselves on their direct familiarity with the explicit contents of that which they wished to ban (or even burn). They used their literacy in their brazen efforts to control the uses of others’ literacy. Today’s banners and burners, by contrast, are the new illiterates, achieving a rare historical distinction."
Harvey J. Graff is a professor emeritus of English and history and Ohio Eminent Scholar at the Ohio State University; the author of The Legacies of Literacy, among other books; and the founding director of LiteracyStudies@OSU.
I have only very quickly read through Graff's article and while I generally agree with him, I do find it a bit troubling that he only focusses on right wing, on Republican book banners, when let's face it, there are also some and equally volatile left wing book banning movements. And also, while there is some truth to the fact that certain Republication US states with their extensive book banning obviously enjoy and preach illiteracy, enable and celebrate ignorance and are definitely reminiscent of the Catholic Counter Reformation, for me personally, states like Florida, Texas et al with their book banning extravaganzas, remind me much more of Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany.
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I added quotation marks. And the last part is my own.
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2019: In the United States, people demanded the removal of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from public library shelves. Complainants objected to profanity and “vulgarity and sexual overtones” in the text, reported the American Library Association (ALA). The novel, which was published in 1985, depicts a future Christian theocracy in the southern half of North America. The ALA also reported that Atwood’s novel was the 88th most frequently challenged book from 2000 to 2009 and the 37th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999 in U.S. public libraries.
2016: In northern Russia, the Vorkuta Mining and Economics College burned 53 books, including textbooks about logic, French surrealism, and criminology. A spokesperson said they were full of ideas “alien to Russian ideology.” A Western foundation created by George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, had provided the money to publish the books. The college also seized another 427 books for shredding.
2013: In Pakistan, spokesmen for organizations that represent the nation’s private schools announced bans on I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. In November, Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, said that a ban was in force in the libraries of 40,000 affiliated schools. Kashif Mirza, chairman of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, said a ban was in force in its affiliated schools. Senior education officials said the book—which was co-authored by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb—showed insufficient respect for Islam.
2013: Islamist insurgents in the African nation of Mali set fire to a library in Timbuktu and incinerated 4,000 ancient manuscripts. The damage would have been worse, but a quick-thinking librarian had organized the removal of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts to safety.
2012: In the United States, people demanded the removal of Toni Morrison’s Beloved from public library shelves. Complainants claimed the novel was sexually explicit, and they objected to depictions of violence and the novel’s religious viewpoint, reported the American Library Association (ALA). The novel, which was published in 1987, explores the destructive legacy of slavery in 19th-century America. The ALA also reported that Morrison’s novel was the 26th most frequently challenged book from 2000 to 2009 and the 45th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999 in U.S. public libraries.
2012: In May, Irshad Manji—a reform-minded Muslim—toured Malaysia to promote her book Allah, Liberty and Love. In Kuala Lumpur, government officials raided bookstores to confiscate copies of the book. Then, after receiving a critical report from the Department of Islamic Development, Malaysia’s Ministry of Home Affairs banned the book. Manji protested the ban, and her Malaysian publisher challenged the ban in court.
2011: In June, Canadian author Lawrence Hill received an email from a man in the Netherlands who said that he and others planned to burn Hill’s novel The Book of Negroes because they objected to the use of the N-word in the title. On June 22, they burned copies of the book’s cover in Amsterdam. Two years later, Hill published another work: Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book: An Anatomy of a Book Burning.
2010: The U.S. Department of Defense bought and destroyed the entire first printing—9,500 copies—of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s Operation Dark Heart. The book focused on the war in Afghanistan. Even though Shaffer had worked closely with military officials when he was writing the manuscript, some feared that the book would reveal military secrets. Shaffer’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press, did release a second printing, but it featured cuts and changes that the U.S. Department of Defense had ordered.
2010: In India, nationalist students burned copies of Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry’s acclaimed novel, at the gates of the University of Mumbai. The students also pressed the university to stop teaching the book. Aditya Thackeray, the students’ leader, said he objected to the “obscene and vulgar language” in the novel and to negative references to India’s nationalist politicians, including his grandfather. The university quickly dropped the novel from the syllabus.
2001: The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, passed by the American Congress in response to terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, gave the FBI power to collect information about the library borrowings of any U.S. citizen. The act also empowered the federal agency to gain access to library patrons’ log-ons to Internet Web sites—and protected the FBI from disclosing the identities of individuals being investigated.
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1998: In Kenya the government banned 30 books and publications for “sedition and immorality,” including The Quotations of Chairman Mao and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.
1997: In Ireland, a government censorship board banned at least 24 books and 90 periodicals.
1992: In August, during the Bosnian war, Serbian troops shelled the National Library in Sarajevo. They destroyed between 1.5 million and 3 million volumes. It was one of the worst book burnings in modern history. Soldiers shot at anyone who tried to save the books.
1988: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which some critics said blasphemed Islam, was burned repeatedly by Muslims in the United Kingdom. In October, India—a majority Hindu nation which has a minority Muslim population—became the first of several countries in the world to ban the novel. (In 2012, Indian writers called for the ban’s repeal.) The Republic of South Africa also banned the novel in 1988, although the government lifted this ban in 2002.
1987: After retiring from 20 years’ service with Britain’s MI5 counterintelligence agency, Peter Wright moved to Australia and wrote his autobiography, entitled Spycatcher, in which he accused British security services of trying to topple Harold Wilson’s 1974–76 Labour government. The book, a best-seller, was banned in Britain, and the British government waged a lengthy and expensive legal battle to prevent its publication in Australia. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that if Wright ever returned to Britain, he would be prosecuted for breaching the country’s Official Secrets Act. But when Wright died in 1995, he got the last laugh, since his ashes were scattered over the waters of the Blackwater Sailing Club in southern England.
1987: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou was removed from the required reading list for Wake County, North Carolina, high school students because of a scene in which the author, at the age of seven and a half, is raped.
1983: Members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of The Diary of Anne Frank because it was “a real downer.” It was also challenged for offensive references to sexuality.
1980s: During its examination of school learning materials, the London County Council in England banned the use of Beatrix Potter’s children’s classics The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny from all London schools. The reason: the stories portrayed only “middle-class rabbits.”
1977: Maurice Sendak’s picture book In the Night Kitchen was removed from the Norridge, Illinois, school library because of “nudity to no purpose.” The book was expurgated elsewhere when shorts were drawn on the nude boy.
1977: Decent Interval, a memoir written by a former CIA employee, criticized the CIA, Henry Kissinger, and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Author Frank Snepp succeeded in getting his book published before the CIA knew about it, but the government filed a lawsuit against him, even though no classified information appeared in the book. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Snepp; the government seized all profits from the book and imposed a lifelong gag order on the author. Snepp was required to submit everything he might write—fiction, screenplays, non-fiction, poetry—to the CIA for review. The CIA won the right to cut any classified or classifiable information within 30 days of receipt of Snepp’s work.
1974: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence revealed some of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s dirty tricks and failures overseas and in the United States. The authors (Victor Marchetti, a former senior analyst for the CIA, and John D. Marks, a former U.S. State Department official) were told by a U.S. court to submit their manuscript to the CIA before the book was published. The CIA demanded the removal of 339 passages from the text, but eventually the publisher won the right to retain 171 of those in the first edition of the book. By 1980, the publisher had won the legal right to publish 25 more passages, but the most recent edition (1989) still indicated numerous censored passages.
1973: The school board in Drake, North Dakota, ordered the burning of 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and 60 copies of James Dickey’s Deliverance for, respectively, the use of profanity and references to homosexuality.
1970: White Niggers of America, a political tract about Quebec politics and society, was written by Pierre Vallières while he was in jail. The book was confiscated when the writer was accused of sedition, and an edition published in France was not allowed into Canada. A U.S. edition was published in English in 1971.
1960: D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the subject of a trial in England, in which Penguin Books was prosecuted for publishing an obscene book. During the proceedings, the prosecutor asked: “Is it a book you would wish your wife or servant to read?” Penguin won the case, and the book was allowed to be sold in England. A year earlier, the U.S. Post Office had declared the novel obscene and non-mailable. But a federal judge overturned the Post Office’s decision and questioned the right of the postmaster general to decide what was or was not obscene.
1959: After protests by the White Citizens’ Council, The Rabbits’ Wedding, a picture book for children, was put on the reserved shelf in Alabama public libraries because it was thought to promote racial integration.
1954: Mickey Mouse comics were banned in East Berlin because Mickey was said to be an “anti-Red rebel.”
1953: The Irish government banned Anatole France’s A Mummer’s Tale (for immorality), Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Across the River and Into the Trees (for immorality), all the works of John Steinbeck (for subversion and immorality), all the works of Emile Zola (for immorality), and most works by William Faulkner (for immorality).
1937: The Quebec government passed An Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda, popularly known as the Padlock Act. The statute empowered the attorney general to close, for up to one year, any building that was used to disseminate “communism or bolshevism.” (These two terms were undefined.) In addition, the act empowered the attorney general to confiscate and destroy any publication propagating communism or bolshevism. Anyone caught publishing, printing, or distributing such literature faced imprisonment for up to one year without appeal. In 1957, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the Padlock Act in a case called Switzman vs. Elbling. The court said that the act made the propagation of communism a crime; however, the court’s reason for striking down the law had less to do with the evils of censorship than with the division of powers between federal and provincial governments. The court declared that the power to pass criminal law belonged exclusively to Ottawa, so Quebec’s Padlock Act was ultra vires and unconstitutional. Only two justices raised the issue of censorship in this case.
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1932: In a letter to an American publisher, James Joyce said that “some very kind person” bought the entire first edition of Dubliners and had it burnt.
1931: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was banned by the governor of Hunan province in China because, he said, animals should not use human language and it was disastrous to put animals and humans on the same level.
1929–62: Novels by Ernest Hemingway were banned in various parts of the world such as Italy, Ireland, and Germany (where they were burned by the Nazis). In California in 1960, The Sun Also Rises was banned from schools in San Jose and all of Hemingway’s works were removed from Riverside school libraries. In 1962, a group called Texans for America opposed textbooks that referred students to books by the Nobel Prize-winning author.
1929: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was banned in the Soviet Union because of “occultism.”
1929: Jack London’s popular novel Call of the Wild was banned in Italy and Yugoslavia. In 1932, copies of this and other books by London were burned by the Nazis in Germany.
1927: A translation of The Arabian Nights by the French scholar Mardrus was held up by U.S. Customs. Four years later another translation, by Sir Richard Burton, was allowed into the country, but the ban on the Mardrus version was maintained.
1885: A year after the publication of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the library of Concord, Massachusetts, decided to exclude the book from its collection. The committee making the decision said the book was “rough, coarse and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” By 1907, it was said that Twain’s novel had been thrown out of some library somewhere every year, mostly because its hero was said to present a bad example for impressionable young readers.
1881: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (published in 1833) was threatened with banning by Boston’s district attorney unless the book was expurgated. The public uproar brought such sales of his books that Whitman was able to buy a house with the proceeds.
1864–1959: Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables was placed on the Index Librorum.
1859: George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede was attacked as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind,” and the book was withdrawn from circulation libraries in Britain.
1859: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published, outlining the theory of evolution. The book was banned from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, where Darwin had been a student. In 1925, Tennessee banned the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools; the law remained in force until 1967. The Origin of Species was banned in Yugoslavia in 1935 and in Greece in 1937.
1843: The English Parliament updated an act that required all plays to be performed in England to be submitted for approval to the Lord Chamberlain. Despite objections by illustrious figures such as George Bernard Shaw (in 1909), this power remained with the Lord Chamberlain until 1968.
1807: Dr. Thomas Bowdler quietly brought out the first of his revised editions of Shakespeare’s plays. The preface claimed that he had removed from Shakespeare “everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty”—which amounted to about 10 per cent of the playwright’s text. One hundred and fifty years later, it was discovered that the real excision had been done by Dr. Bowdler’s sister, Henrietta Maria. The word “bowdlerize” became part of the English language.
1807: In Paris, French police entered the room in the asylum where the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned and seized several of his manuscripts, including the manuscript of his latest novel, The Days at Florbelle. The police claimed that the notorious libertine’s novel was blasphemous and obscene, and Sade never saw it again. After Sade died in 1814, his younger son, anxious to restore the Sade family’s name, asked the Ministry of Justice to burn The Days at Florbelle and any other manuscript like it. The authorities obliged. But one police officer saved one notebook: it outlined the story and briefly described a few characters and incidents.
1788: Shakespeare’s King Lear was banned from the stage until 1820—in deference to the insanity of the reigning monarch, King George III.
1744: Sorrows of Young Werther by the famed German author Goethe was published in this year and soon became popular throughout Europe. The book was a short novel, in diary form, in which a young man writes of his sufferings from a failed love affair. The final chapter of the book drops the diary form and graphically depicts Werther’s suicide. Because a number of copycat suicides followed the publication of the book, the Lutheran church condemned the novel as immoral; then governments in Italy, Denmark, and Germany banned the book. Two hundred years later an American sociologist, David Phillips, wrote about the effect of reporting suicides in The Werther Effect.
1720: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was placed on the Index Librorum by the Spanish Catholic Church.
1616–42: Galileo’s theories about the solar system and his support of the discoveries of Copernicus were condemned by the Catholic Church. Under threat of torture, and sentenced to jail at the age of 70, the great scientist was forced to renounce what he knew to be true. On his death, his widow agreed to destroy some of his manuscripts.
1624: Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible was burnt in Germany by order of the Pope.
1614: Sir Walter Raleigh’s book The History of the World was banned by King James I of England for “being too saucy in censuring princes.”
1597: The original version of Shakespeare’s Richard II contained a scene in which the king was deposed from his throne. Queen Elizabeth I was so angry that she ordered the scene removed from all copies of the play.
1559: For hundreds of years, the Roman Catholic Church listed books that were prohibited to its members; but in this year, Pope Paul IV established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For more than 400 years this was the definitive list of books that Roman Catholics were told not to read. It was one of the most powerful censorship tools in the world.
1524–26: Thousands of copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament were printed in Germany and smuggled into England, where they were publicly burned in 1526 on the orders of London’s Roman Catholic bishop. Church authorities in England insisted that the Bible would be available only in Latin and that only they would be able to read and interpret it. In 1536, as a result of a plot masterminded by the English, Tyndale was arrested in Belgium, tried for heresy, and strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels. A few of his translations were burned with him. Today, only three original copies of Tyndale’s New Testament survive.
1497–98: Savonarola, a Florentine religious fanatic with a large following, was one of the most notorious and powerful of all censors. In these years, he instigated great “bonfires of the vanities” which destroyed books and paintings by some of the greatest artists of Florence. He persuaded the artists themselves to bring their works—including drawings of nudes—to the bonfires. Some poets decided they should no longer write in verse because they were persuaded that their lines were wicked and impure. Popular songs were denounced, and some were turned into hymns with new pious lyrics. Ironically, in May of 1498 another great bonfire was lit—this time under Savonarola who hung from a cross. With him were burned all his writings, sermons, essays, and pamphlets.
640: According to legend, the caliph Omar burned all 200,000 volumes in the library at Alexandria in Egypt. In doing so, he said: “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Book of God they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” In burning the books, the caliph provided six months’ fuel to warm the city’s baths.
35: The Roman emperor Caligula opposed the reading of The Odyssey by Homer, written more than 300 years before. He thought the epic poem was dangerous because it expressed Greek ideas of freedom.
A.D. 8: The Roman poet Ovid was banished from Rome for writing Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love). He died in exile in Greece eight years later. All Ovid’s works were burned by Savonarola in Florence in 1497, and an English translation of Ars Amatoria was banned by U.S. Customs in 1928.
259–210 B.C.: The Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti is said to have buried alive 460 Confucian scholars to control the writing of history in his time. In 212 B.C., he burned all the books in his kingdom, retaining only a single copy of each for the Royal Libraryand those were destroyed before his death. With all previous historical records destroyed, he thought history could be said to begin with him.
The first book banned in America is up for dispute. Scholars have long claimed it was The new English Canaan of Thomas Mortonbut I've also read Puritans banned The Christian Commonwealth, Or, the Civil Policy of the Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ. and The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption Iustification &c. Cleering It From Some Common Errors.... The first official ban was Thomas Morton's book. It inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "The Maypole at Merrymount." The book was banned because Morton critiqued the Puritans, claiming they “make a great show of religion but no humanity.”https://bbark.deepforestproductions.c...
(Also common knowledge in literary circles)
The Puritans banned any books that didn't suit their ideology, ironically just as King James did to them!
In library school I learned the printing press led to increased knowledge - including knowledge the Catholic church didn't want people to know. Those books became marrive hits with people quietly trying to buy them. I can not find specific internet documentation of this information and don't remember whether the professor share it with the class or if it was in a book.
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Ironic, but not surprising, considering how the Puritans had ruled in England.
In 1873, the war against books went federal with the passage of the Comstock Act, a congressional law that made it illegal to possess “obscene” or “immoral” texts or articles or send them through the mail. That led to more book bans and specific children's editions of books.
In the 19th and early 20th-century, many popular children's books came under fire.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz In 1928 all public libraries banned the book arguing that the story was ungodly for “depicting women in strong leadership roles”. The sentiment continued through the 1950s and 60s. In 1952 a Florida librarian named Dorothy Dodd publicly denounced the books stating that they were unwholesome for young readers. Then in 1957 the Detroit Public Library banned Baum’s tales by stating the novels had “no value for children of today”, arguing the stories and characters supported “negativism and brought children’s minds to a cowardly level”. (and again in 1986 with seven Fundamentalist Christian families from Tennessee pushing for the novel’s removal from the public school syllabus. They filed a lawsuit against the schools arguing that “the novel’s depiction of benevolent witches and promoting the belief that essential human attributes were ‘individually developed rather than God given’”. )
http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=3231
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass is often challenged for its alleged promotion of drug use. Previously, In the early 1900s the state of New Hampshire banned the book from all public schools because the novel was accused of promoting [inappropriate behaviors (view spoiler)
The novel has also been challenged for its use of talking animals, which were deemed an abomination in the sight of God by many religious institutions.
http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=3192
My beloved favorite and namesake, [book:Winnie-the-Pooh|99107] has also been challenged by religious groups because the animal characters can speak and act like humans.
In the United Kingdom, Winnie-The-Pooh along with Charlottes Web and The Little Pigs nursery rhyme were banned from public schools because the talking pig characters might offend Muslim and Jewish students who abstain from pork as part of their religions.
The Brothers Grimm Grimm's Fairy Tales (Children's and Household Tales) came under fire by 19th-century parents almost as soon as it was published in English. The tales were deemed too scary for children and later editions santized the tales a bit. The stories have come under fire in the 20th century as well. In 1989 California school districts banned Little Red Riding Hood, one of the many tales from the Brothers Grimm, from the shelves of the elementary schools in that district. The superintendent for the district argued that the story sent mixed messages regarding the consumption of alcohol. The district banned the book in order to protect its readers from the adverse effects of alcohol.
In 1994 an Arizona school district banned the entire Brothers Grimm collection from all classrooms below the 6th grade. The Arizona superintendent argued the books should be banned due to “excessive violence, negative portrayals of female characters, and anti-Semitic references common throughout the fairy tale narratives” (bannedbooksweek.com)
Snow White was banned in 1992 at a Florida elementary school, citing graphic violence as the reason.
http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=3220
Roald Dahl's books frequently faced constant criticism from libraries, school boards, and radical religious groups. Matilda has been challenged on the grounds that the presentation of neglectful abusive parents can be harmful to young children. Also because children should not use tricks for personal gain.
James and the Giant Peach has been censored many times since its publication in 1961. “It has been banned for being too scary for the targeted age groups, mysticism, sexual inferences, profanity, racism, references to tobacco and alcohol, and claims that it promotes disobedience, drugs, and communism” (bannedbooksweeks.com).
In the early 1990s a public school system in Texas banned James and the Giant Peach from the primary school classrooms, library, and syllabi because the school district’s superintendent argued that the books were inappropriate for young children based off the use of curse words in the book such as “ass”.
In 1986 a small Wisconsin town banned the book because of a scene featuring the spider licking her lips. Religious groups in the town argued that this scene could be “taken in two ways, including sexual” (The Times of London).
A year after this incident, a woman in Hernando County Florida took issue with the Grasshopper’s statement, “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican”, arguing that the book promoted racist ideals. This woman also was bothered by the books depiction of snuff, tobacco, and whiskey. Her complaints to the local school districts led to a review by the Florida school board ending in the book being temporarily banned from the schools reading list.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was challenged because the description of Oompa Loompas as small black pygmies was racist. Dahl changed the description of the Oompa Loompas in the revised edition, published in 1988.
In 1990 one Colorado librarian appealed to the American Library Association to censor Dahl’s story. She argued that the book promoted a poor philosophy on life and that Charlie, the main character, had no redeeming positive traits, only the absence of negative ones.
http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=3246
Facts on banned books from Yahoo: (Link no longer works)1982: The year the ALA celebrated the first Banned Books Week.
1990: The first year the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom began gathering statistics about banned books.
4,312: The number of challenges received by American libraries between 2001 and 2009. According to the American Library Association's definition, a challenge is a formal and written complaint requesting that a book be removed from shelves because of objectionable content.
1,502: The number of challenges tabulated between 2001 and 2009 that occurred in classroom settings.
451: The temperature in degrees Fahrenheit that book paper catches fire and burns. Ray Bradbury used that scientific factoid to write "Fahrenheit 451," a novel about a futuristic society in which reading is discouraged. In today's world, some people who challenge books often stage book burnings in public places.
69: "Fahrenheit 451's" ranking on the ALA's "Top 100 Challenged/Banned Books: 2000-2009"
1979: The year that Katherine Patterson's young adult novel "The Great Gilly Hopkins" received both the Newberry Honor Award and the National Book Award.
20: "The Great Gilly Hopkins" ranking on the ALA's "Top 100 most frequently challenged books: 1990-1999." Most of the challenges are due to the character of Gilly Hopkins, a foster child who frequently uses the words "damn" and "hell".
65 million: Estimated number of books sold by prolific author Judy Blume. In 2005, Dr. Rick Schneider banned Blume's ground-breaking young-adult novel "Forever" from the shelves of the Pasadena Independent School District.
4: The number of voyages taken by the title character in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Gulliver's final voyage took him to a world of talking horses who ruled over humans called Yahoos). Swift's book was banned in Ireland in 1726 for obscenity and wickedness.
In 2017 there was a 17% increase in book censorship complaints in 2016. The actual number is likely much higher because most challenges are not reported. While only 10% of the titles reported are normally removed from the institutions receiving the challenges. Half of the most frequently challenged books were actually banned last year.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been challenged since publication in 1884 because of the use of vulgar language. At the time, that did not mean the same thing it means now, the use of the n-word. Some were concerned over Twain's intentional use of bad grammar in the book.
Public commissioners in Concord, Massachusetts described it as racist, coarse, trashy, inelegant, irreligious, obsolete, inaccurate, and mindless.
The Brooklyn Public Library banned the book in 1905 “Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.”
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/...
Toward the end of 1905 to transfer all copies of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to adult sections, where young readers would be less likely to encounter them. Twain decried censorship but maintained he had written the book for adults.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mark-t...
1963: Where the Wild Things Are criticized because it was "psychologically damaging and traumatizing to young children" due to Max’s inability to control his emotions and his punishment of being sent to bed without dinner. Psychologists called it “too dark”, and the book was banned largely in the south. It has also been challenged several times for its images of witchcraft and supernatural elements.1965 Green Eggs and Ham banned for its portrayal of early Marxism.
In 1977 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble was banned in some U.S. school districts and organizations because it shows the police as pigs!
1983 Harriet the Spy was challenged at a school board meeting in Xenia, Ohio, where some argued the book encouraged children to disrespect their parents by lying, talking back, cursing, and spying on others. The female character of Harriet was also believed to be a bad influence on children because of her abrasiveness and improper behavior.
In the late 20th-century, My family favorite, Strega Nona, has been banned from a number of children’s libraries in the United States for depicting magic, witches, and witchcraft in a positive light.
in 1988, The Giving Tree was banned from a public library in Colorado in 1988 because it was interpreted as being sexist. Some readers believe that the young boy continually takes from the female tree, without ever giving anything in return. As the boy grows up, he always comes back to the tree when he needs something, taking until the tree has nothing left to give him.
In 1989 The Lorax was banned in a California school because it was believed to portray logging in a poor light and would turn children against the foresting industry.
1990, Coral Springs, FL pulled My Friend Flicka from fifth- and sixth-grade optional reading lists in this town after parents complained it contained vulgar language.
The same school also pulled Abel's Island because of references to drinking wine.
1993 A Light in the Attic banned in a Florida school because adults thought it promoted, and even encouraged, disobedience, violence, suicide, Satan and cannibalism.
1990s The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree banned and challenged because the name of the town in the book is Coven Tree.
1990-2000 Where's Waldo?" was one of the top 100 most banned books due to ONE tiny picture of a topless woman. I had to really hunt to find it.
(notes compiled from various sources, some not available anymore).
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For example, in Great Britain, picture books about the Three Little Pigs and the classic novel Charlotte's Web were challenged in 2003 on the grounds that stories about pigs might offend the Muslim community (but ACTUALLY NOT by members of the Muslim community). And while the Muslim Council of Britain has in fact very publicly spoken out against a movement in the U.K. by certain (non-Muslim) teachers to ban ALL stories involving pigs from primary schools and called it a "well-intentioned but misguided" attempt at cultural sensitivity, let's face it, any attempts to ban books with pigs as characters might of cause automatically be blamed on Muslims (and perhaps also Jews) even if this is done by over-zealous and silly so-called activists neither Muslim nor Jewish.
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I will be adding Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story and other books by Beverley Naidoo when I set up the reading lists for this topic come January.
https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/books/b...
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Interesting and frustrating, but it should be noted that the story of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty being banned in Apartheid South Africa due to only the title seems to be a book-themed urban legend.
Manybooks wrote: "https://udayton.edu/libraries/_resour...Interesting and frustrating, but it should be noted that the story of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty being banned in Apar..."
Great list! Thank you!
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Interesting and frustrating, but it should be noted that the story of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty be..."
I really appreciate the admission that the story of Black Beauty being banned in South Africa was likely a book banning myth (on the other hand, SA certainly seems to have banned a lot of books during the Apartheid years).
Duval County, Florida schools have been challenging books since the 1980s. Some reasons given are:
101 Ways To Bug Your Parents -- rude, disrespectful (recommended to keep on open shelf)
The Acorn People -- Inappropriate for elementary schools (Parental Permission needed)
Addie's Dakota Winter--offensive language (recommended for Open Checkout)
Adventures of Super Duper Diaper Baby -- Inappropriate content, Spelling errors (recommended for Open Checkout)
Animorphs, The Proposal-- violence (recommended for Open Shelf)
Arbor House Book of Cartooning-- Pictures (Parental Permission, high school)
The Chocolate War -- Vulgar, Inappropriate for Children (Parental Permission - Middle School, open checkout HS)
Beyond the Chocolate War--Strong Sexual Content, Disrespect (Middle and HS open checkout)
The Body Art Book--Anatomical Terminology (open checkout MS, HS)
The Boy Who Cried Wolf--Too suggestive drawing for Elementary (open checkout all grades)
The Chicken and the Egg (Oxford Scientific Press) -- Animal mating (parental permission ES)
The Children On Troublemaker Street--Objectionable Language (unrestricted)
Breaking the Fall --Aberrant Behavior (parental permission MS)
Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs--Depart.from trad. Santa ( Parental Permission - K - 3rd Unrestricted 4-12)
Guilty or not guilty?: Tales of justice in early America -- Inappropriate Racial Slur (Weeded from Collection in 2001-2002)
Matilda by Roald Dahl --Vulgar, Unethical (open checkout)
Everyone's favorite Judy Blume Are you There God? It's Me, Margaret challenged twice in 1983-1984 and 2003-2004 for different reasons.
1983-1984 -- Religious, Sex (unrestricted)
2003-2004 Introduction to Pornography (Open Shelf)
Also in 1983-1984 Another Blume book
Blubber -- Profanity (parental permission all grades)
Dr. Seuss was challenged way back in 1992-1993
The Butter Battle Book -- violence (Unrestricted ES)
Other reasons to challenge books besides the usual "obscene" content such as drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. :
witchcraft
occult
Graphic Reading Material
illustrations
Racial
animal mating
Negative Name-Calling
Cannibalism
Inappropriate Language
pictures
negative Influences
Immoral Suggestion
swearing
Negative, Nonproductive tone
scary
Bestiality
Darwinian evolution
crude/harsh language
Disrespect
Sarcasm
Improper Grammar
"stupid" and "God"
Religion/Ethic
Inappropriate "slang"
wine
gambling
Offensive and Racist Word
Religious Conflict
Graphic Representation
Obscene writing
druid practices
Blatant disregard for moral standard
The devil
morality
Exposed Breast
Conflict w/Santa Myth
Use of Magic/Teaching
Advertisements & Articles (magazine)
Lack of literacy value
Animal cruelty
Snake Eating Chick
Puppy Urinating & Defecating
https://dcps.duvalschools.org/Page/29424
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Some reasons given are:
101 Ways To Bug Your Parents -- rude, disrespectful (recommended to keep on open shelf)
The Acor..."
Oh boy, so I guess a student talking about housetraining his or her puppy or a student who lives on a farm talking about young male horses being gelded could get into trouble?
But then again, I did get into trouble in grade five when I did a report in class about how and why I did not agree with my father poisoning gophers (as it was supposedly an "inappropriate" topic for school).
Children's Books
Books mentioned in this topic
The Boy Who Cried Wolf (other topics)Guilty or Not Guilty?: Tales of Justice in Early America (other topics)
Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story (other topics)
Where's Waldo? (other topics)
The Wish Giver (other topics)
More...
And no, you do not have to post sequentially, but please make sure you use dates, if dates are necessary and would make what you have posted more informational.
Will be adding more information anon.