The Forbidden Library

I seriously detest book-banners. No, really. I seriously detest people who think a book should be banned because it runs counter to their viewpoint. Forcing one's ideas upon others and denying them the chance to form their own opinions, in my mind, is a crime of the highest magnitude. (And my stance on book burners would probably frighten most people... so let's not go there...)

For example: The DaVinci Code. It's a novel. It's a story. And yet, because it expresses some elements that runs counter to the world's predominant religion, many people are up in arms against the book.

I read a book review on it that wasn't really a "review" per se, but a four page long diatribe on how the elements of this work of fiction were... well... Untrue.

To which I would like to respond with a big ole Duh.

It's a book. It's a story. I personally think it's a good one, although I prefer the first book, Angels & Demons, to The DaVinci Code.

Don't even get me started on Harry Potter. I don't read them, but the Pope himself is condemning them as a corrupting influence. I would think the leader of the world's Catholics would have better things to do.

Moving along, my friend Nicole pointed out this website: The Forbidden Library. It contains a list of books that have been banned over the years. Some bans are old or foreign, but many were right here, recently, in the United States, by school and public libraries.

A selection:

George Orwell's 1984: One of the more insulting selections on this list, 1984 was challenged in 1981 in Jackson County, Florida, for being pro-communist... which it isn't. It's a book about the dangers of too much government influence. Of course, Big Brother would disapprove this book being read by the public at large!

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl: an important first hand book on the Holocaust was challenged in Wise County, Virginia in 1982 and by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983. Too negative? A book concerning the Holocaust? Really? You think?!

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was removed from the library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin in 1974 for being "slanted." Is that what they’re calling our past slaughters of Native Americans? "Slanted?" How novel.

In 1995, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was removed from a senior literature course at Eureka High School in Eureka, Illinois. A CLASSIC literature text was removed from a LITERATURE course... Just… no comment…

In 1987, the science textbook Earth Science was challenged by the Plymouth-Canton school system in Canton, Michigan for "teaching Evolution exclusively", avoiding "any mention of Creationism", and "underminds {sic} the parental guidance and teaching the children receives at home and from the pulpit." Don't even get me started on this one.

Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was heavily censored by the Venando Middle School in Irvine, California in 1992. How ironic... A book about censorship being censored...

And I'm not even that far into it, nor have I been using every example... Also on this list are Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, and Roald Dahl. Shakespeare appears on this list more than once.

And for God's sake: Where's Waldo was challenged in 1989 by the public libraries of Saginaw, Michigan because there was a tiny drawing of a woman sunbathing without a top.

Censorship, especially at public libraries, is never a good thing.

Rock on.

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime..."
-- Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)