Tell me what you really think.
The surest way to get me to read a book is to put it on a banned list. That was true in school and it is still true.
Ah, the good times. I remember that bulletin board.
You made a lot of "good Christian parents" uncomfortable with your support of free speech, and I for one thank you. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I wouldn't be who or where I am without having had Mamacita as a teacher. Period.
WF
A former classmate, now a principal, was once featured on the front page of the local newspaper. His crime? Reading James and the Giant Peach with his students. The offended parent never once discussed it with him, his principal or any school official, she went straight to the newspaper with her claim of her kid being forced to read a devil book. The paper, eager for some attention grabbing headlines, snapped it right up.
Fortunately he survived and I understand is a very well respected principal.
I was going to say what Kenju said.
No better way to get someone to read something than to tell them they can't.
So it actually works to the reader's advantage. 
I'm off to read a dirty book! W00T!
Since we don't really actually ban books here, just put out lists of books we'd like to see banned, getting on the banned list might actually be good for sales.
We had a little deal with the school here a while back about what kids understand. They understand everything actually, as a result you pretty much have to give them all the information, because just like everyone else, incomplete information can result in really wrong conclusions.
I read dirty books too. I have been reading books off the American Library Association's "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000" for the last year. I have 38% read. I shall check out the ones from my school library this week. I might even read some to my second graders. I bought The Stupids this summer, maybe I will read those.
HAHAHAHAHAHA.... I'm going for Captain Underpants!!
Oh my god. Get a life, people. I loved it when they had the "Condemned" list of movies in the Tablet every week. We always knew exactly what to go see!
I was just writing about this yesterday while I made up my Giant Fall Reading List.
I'm amazed at how difficult it was for me to find banned books I haven't already read! And amazed at how many banned books I've read to the kids (8, 6, 3) without thinking anything of it.
If a parent doesn't think their child is mature enough for a book, it should be the parent's job to know the book's contents and do any "censorship" themselves. That doesn't mean a book should be banned from a library.
I don't feel the same about the overtly violent video games that involve car jackings, rapes and murders. These just seem to desensitize kids and have no redeeming value at all.
Thanks for the link. I was also disappointed by 'Catcher in the Rye.' Never understood what all the fuss was about.
I am SO with you on Catcher in the Rye-- cut out all the cuss words, and the book would be 10 pages long.
I went to your link, and-- can I say?
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD????? What is wrong with these people?? I expect the Harry Potter and the Heather Has Two Mommies, because these people have tiny minds. But-- Harper Lee?
Gad.
"In 1981, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was challenged in Jackson County, Florida, for containing procommunist and explicitly sexual material. Karolides reports that Orwell's Animal Farm rates among the books most often censored. In 1987, it was one of sixty-four books school superintendent Leonard Hill banned from two high schools in Panama City, Florida."
If you can get the list - I have it somewhere at home - Hill banned pretty much all of Shakespeare, Dickens and a few other books considered staples amongst the canons of American and British literature.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it. There was a librarian in Boulder, Co. the early 90's or late 80's who was pulling stuff off the shelves where she worked because she deemed it unsuitable...I don't remember specifics, but they were along the lines of books like "God, Are You There, It's Me Margaret."
Teaching about censorship is one of the things I miss most about teaching. I loved covering the McCarthy era and the birth of organizations such as the Comics Code Authority and the MPAA.
At Christmastime during seventh grade, my English class read one of those pre-packaged passages from the
"great works of literature" that are often featured in the old standard lit books. The passage was the tree throwing scene from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". I liked it so much, I checked out the book the next day, and read it all in one night. I was disappointed to learn that, not only did the questions at the end of the lit book passage totally misunderstand the power and meaning of the tree throwing scene, but that they had censored the foul mouth of the tree vendor. The scene lost some of its atmosphere in the edited passage, and I was insulted that they felt we seventh graders needed the censorship of what was really tame cursing, even for my day.
By the way, "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" became my all-time favorite novel, just a hair ahead of "To Kill a Mockingbird". I find it funny as an adult that we were encouraged by the censored lit book to check out the entire "Brooklyn" book because that thing had far worse subjects, language, and imagery than anything I had read before then. Oh well!
How... Utterly.... rude... all of it really... "not smart enough" heh... heh... heh...
Well! I am off to the bookstore now. Thank you kindly, my good friend.
Hello
without free speech you are a machine in civilization. Well, anyways i really enjoyed reading your blog. In fact If I were you I would go to http://www.autosurfmonster.com and submit this blog so thousands of tohers can see it for free. I look forward to all the updates. thanks again.
Jessica
If I hadn't read books like "Flowers for Algernon", "Brave New World", "Slaughterhouse 5", etc. ad nauseum, which are listed on these banned lists, during my "formative" years, I wouldn't be who I am today. This is true for all of us, I would imagine, and I for one am @*%! proud of who I am. Without confronting challenging ideas as we are learning to be adults, how are we ever supposed to develop a consciounce?
Commenting by HaloScan
