The Banning of Books
Meryl has a Wednesday poll today about Banned Book Week. As always, loud mouth me is all over the comment page.
I went through the list of Most Challenged Books of 2006 and it's oldies but goodies. Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. The Chocolate War by Richard Cormier. By the way I didn't like any of the three of those books. There were some others I'd never heard of. Here is a list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged books.
What got me thinking though, was this list here. And specifically, this book here. It's not listed on the ALA book as being banned. But several countries have banned this book, Mein Kampf. And as part of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States bought the rights to it, as far as it's sale in the US.
When I saw this title I went ... well yes! Of course that book is banned! Here's another jewel ... Did 6 Million People Really Die? It was published in 1974 and is listed as banned in Canada and most of Europe. In fact ... the author made so much money he was sued by a Canadian court for royalties, and was later charged with a crime of "reporting false news." He was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
I don't know if that's relevent or not. Maybe just interesting.
The point I'm making is that we all have knee jerk reactions when he hear books like Huck Finn and For Whom The Bell Tolls (the best title of any novel ever) are banned, and most recently JK Rowling novels. But when it's something we personal kind of abhor, eh ... it's not so bad if it's banned.
Myself ... and I said this at Meryl's blog ... I noticed my own bit of hypocrisy. "You can't ban Lois Lowry!" but when I saw Adolf Hitler ... "Well, surely we can ban that."
When in reality ... no we can't.
I went through the list of Most Challenged Books of 2006 and it's oldies but goodies. Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. The Chocolate War by Richard Cormier. By the way I didn't like any of the three of those books. There were some others I'd never heard of. Here is a list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged books.
What got me thinking though, was this list here. And specifically, this book here. It's not listed on the ALA book as being banned. But several countries have banned this book, Mein Kampf. And as part of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States bought the rights to it, as far as it's sale in the US.
When I saw this title I went ... well yes! Of course that book is banned! Here's another jewel ... Did 6 Million People Really Die? It was published in 1974 and is listed as banned in Canada and most of Europe. In fact ... the author made so much money he was sued by a Canadian court for royalties, and was later charged with a crime of "reporting false news." He was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
I don't know if that's relevent or not. Maybe just interesting.
The point I'm making is that we all have knee jerk reactions when he hear books like Huck Finn and For Whom The Bell Tolls (the best title of any novel ever) are banned, and most recently JK Rowling novels. But when it's something we personal kind of abhor, eh ... it's not so bad if it's banned.
Myself ... and I said this at Meryl's blog ... I noticed my own bit of hypocrisy. "You can't ban Lois Lowry!" but when I saw Adolf Hitler ... "Well, surely we can ban that."
When in reality ... no we can't.
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