This week, in a stand against censorship and in support of intellectual freedom, the American Library Association is celebrating Banned Books Week. This annual awareness campaign not only encourages the public to pick up and read books that have been the targets of attempted bannings, but also encourages readers everywhere to challenge attempted bannings in their local schools, libraries, bookstores, and religious institutions.
Now, I’m all for standing up against the censorship of ideas – and banning books means censoring both the production and consumption of ideas. Not exactly something a free society should stand for, right? We should keep in mind, though, that most books which have been challenged in the United States were children’s books that were considered age-inappropriate. And while it can be argued that it should be that parent’s job to decide what his children can and cannot read, let’s just also keep in mind that many children don’t exactly have particularly good parental oversight – and that for these kids, the library is the place where they can get access to books. So perhaps the issue isn’t so black-and-white: maybe it is in our society’s best interests to let our libraries use some discretion when deciding what books to make available to kids. (That is, of course, as long as those decisions remain local. I think we can all agree that we don’t want the government getting all Orwellian on us!)
Still, there’s nothing quite like intellectually “sticking it to The Man”. I think that’s half of the appeal of banned books week – somewhere, a book gets banned, and bibliophiles everywhere rebel by reading that book. So, because I like sticking it to The Man just as much as the next guy, I’ve decided to share with you a list of Jewish authors whose books have been banned (or have almost been banned). I was originally planning to compile my own list, but after a bit of research, I discovered that Tablet Magazine beat me to it this morning:
[1] In 1972, a librarian in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana, used tempera paint to diaper the naked baby in Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. In 1993, the book was challenged in Minnesota’s Elk River elementary schools because “reading the book could lay the foundation for future use of pornography.”
[2] In The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Newbery Medalist Louis Sachar, a boy gives the middle finger to an old woman during an episode of peer pressure and bullying. The book was challenged at an elementary school in San Ramon, California, in 1993. for obscene gestures, profanity, and “inappropriate subject matter.”
[3] In William Steig’s Caldecott-Medal-winning Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, police officers are drawn as pigs. The Illinois Police Association therefore wrote to librarians in 1977 asking them to remove the book from libraries. (Even though the pigs in the book are perfectly nice pigs.)
[4] Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume is No. 60 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Frequently Banned or Challenged Books of the 1990s. (In the Night Kitchen is No. 10.) It’s been challenged for sexual and religious themes, as have many of Blume’s books, which may have something to do with her being so active in the National Coalition Against Censorship.
[5] Robie Harris’s four brilliant sex-education books, aimed at kids of different ages and illustrated in comic-book style by Michael Emberley, make censors crazy. Her book for teenagers, It’s Perfectly Normal, is celebrating its 15th anniversary this fall with updated sections on Internet safety, birth control, and the HPV vaccine. In 2008, a patron of the Lewiston, Maine, public library took out the book and refused to give it back because she deemed it disgusting. Other patrons then donated four copies of the book, which remain in circulation. Yay.
[6] According to the delightful website Bookslut, an elementary school in Decatur, Georgia, banned The Bad Beginning, the first volume in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket because it was deemed to endorse incest. In the book, cartoonishly evil Uncle Olaf tries to steal the children’s inheritance by marrying his niece Violet. (She outwits him, of course.) “It’s difficult for me to imagine how I can construct a villain whose actions would be unobjectionable,” Snicket, aka Daniel Handler, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “That’s called a hero.”
Happy illicit reading!
- Naomi
