Book Banning Efforts Bring on Title Fights
NEW YORK - The story seemed like a surefire hit for children. A pair of penguins take care of an egg that isn’t theirs and then raise the baby penguin, after it hatches, as their own.How heartwarming. And who doesn’t love penguins?
Plenty of parents, it turns out, when both penguin parents are male.
That plot twist earned “And Tango Makes Three” the distinction of being the most challenged book of 2006, according to the Chicago-based American Library Association, which compiles an annual list of titles that have been targeted by efforts to remove them from public and school libraries.
“Tango,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, and other controversial titles from the 2006 list, such as two by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and Cecily von Ziegesar’s popular “Gossip Girl” series, will be the center of attention in the coming week at readings and other literary events nationwide as part of Banned Books Week, organized by the library association and other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
In Chicago, the week kicked off Saturday with readings from books on the most-challenged list in Pioneer Court on Michigan Avenue.
Last year the number of challenges — ranging from written complaints to full-blown hearings — jumped to 546, more than 30 percent higher than in 2005. Such annual fluctuations are not unusual, said Judith Krug, head of the library association’s office for intellectual freedom.
Despite the higher number of challenges, the vast majority of efforts to ban specific books came up short: only 29 titles were removed from library shelves last year. Among the titles that disappeared from some libraries were “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse, “The Bluest Eye” by Morrison and “Forever” by Judy Blume.
But even one removal is one too many for Krug.
“You’re taking choice away,” she said. “If it’s removed, no one in that library or school has the opportunity to read that book.”
Supporters of bans
Organizers of efforts to have books removed from public libraries or reading lists in schools say that their efforts are aimed at keeping graphic material, such as obscene language, out of the hands of children.
The library association has been “very successful in spreading their message that anything goes,” said Dan Kleinman, who runs the Web site SafeLibraries .org, which calls for greater parental say in the books used in schools and available to children at libraries. Banned Books Week is “propaganda to convince parents to allow school boards and libraries to continue making inappropriate material available,” he said.
Kleinman cited the decision by the school board in the southwest Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn to keep a book on a summer reading list for 8th graders despite its use of profanity and description of adolescent sexual desires. The board issued an apology for not notifying parents of the contents of the novel, “Fat Kid Rules the World.”
Challenges involving books aimed at children or young adults make up “at least 75″ of every 100 efforts to have a title removed, Krug said.
“Absolutely, parents should have the right to decide whether their children should have access to a book, but that right ends where my nose begins,” said Krug, meaning that others might think that same book was appropriate for their children.
Objections to books come from all points on the political spectrum, she said. If the issue is homosexuality, the challenge is likely to come from religious conservatives, but if the issue is racism, the complaint is more likely to come from the left, “because they’re concerned about eliminating ‘isms,’” Krug said.
In past years, Mark Twain’s use of an offensive term for blacks landed “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” on the most-challenged list. Twain is missing from the newest list.
Offending themes
So is Harry Potter. The Potter series, which concluded this year with the seventh book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” tops the list of most challenged titles from 2000 to 2006, but no new Potter book was published in 2006. Objections have been raised to various titles in the series because of their frequent violence and because some opponents maintain that author J.K. Rowling’s stories about her young wizard hero promote Satanism.
One of the most common themes running through the titles of this year’s top 10 challenged books is homosexuality, cited as grounds for objection in four books, starting with “And Tango Makes Three.”
Simon and Schuster, the book’s publisher, described “Tango” as intended for 4- to 8-year-olds, but parents in many communities, included Shiloh in Downstate Illinois, have complained the age range is too young for a story about a same-sex couple, whether two-legged or two-winged.
“The huge majority of parents would avoid this book if they knew it was brainwashing their children to support and experiment with homosexual behavior,” said Randy Thomasson, president of the California-based Campaign for Children and Families.
The library association refused to disclose how many challenges have been mounted against “Tango,” citing the group’s confidentiality policy. But despite the challenges, the book was not removed from any library last year.
Parnell, a playwright and TV writer, and Richardson, a psychiatrist, got the idea for their book after reading a newspaper story about the zoo penguins.
“We felt that there was an opportunity in this story to talk about different kinds of families,” said Parnell.
To Krug, the way to avoid conflicts is for a library’s board to set clear standards for what it will acquire; but including books that deal with all manner of subjects is one of the most important functions of a library.
“Libraries are one place in the community where everyone is represented on the shelves,” she said.
Content puts hot sellers on hit list
A look at some of the books that the American Library Association says faced the most challenges in 2006:
“And Tango Makes Three,” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. A Central Park Zoo zookeeper watches as two male penguins care for a rock as if it were an egg. He gives them a fertilized penguin egg, and the chick that hatches is named Tango. Opponents say the story promotes homosexuality and is inappropriate for 4- to 8-year-olds, the book’s intended audience.
“Beloved,” by Toni Morrison. This 1987 novel won the Pulitzer Prize. But it has been frequently challenged on the grounds that its story of a Civil War-era slave contains too much profanity, graphic sexual references and violence to be suitable even for high school students.
“The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier. This story of a boy’s refusal to sell chocolate bars for a school fundraiser has appeared frequently on the most-challenged list since it was published in 1974 because it includes obscenity, violence and strong sexual content. Two weeks ago, parents of students at a school on Chicago’s Southwest Side protested its inclusion on required reading lists for 7th graders, but the principal refused to remove it.
The “Gossip Girl” series by Cecily von Ziegesar. Described as “Sex and the City” for teenage girls, these racy novels depict rich New York City girls who engage in casual sex, take drugs and get drunk. A 12th Gossip Girl book is due out in October.
The “Scary Stories” series by Alvin Schwartz. These books were challenged for being unsuitable for the target 9-and-older age group because of references to the occult and Satanism and for violent and insensitive content. The 25-year-old series, a regular on the challenged list, includes a story about a butcher who kills his wife, grinds her up and sells her as “special sausage.”
*For more information about books challenged in 2006, go to the American Library Association Web site, http://www.ala.org .
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Remember watching the infamous ‘bookburning’ by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930’s? Is history repeating itself again? Ignorance is not bliss.
My oh my, when will they ever learn?
If you don’t want yourself or your children to be exposed to these so-called “objectionable” books, then don’t buy them or take them out of the library. The same can be said for newspapers that print stories you would prefer not to read or allow your children to read.
Censorship is a personal choice and will vary from person to person and family to family. No organization(s), religious or otherwise, should be dictating what free people can or cannot read.
“My oh my, when will they ever learn?”
You have to understand, you’re dealing with people who have no concept of history, and moreover, have no analytic/critical thinking abilities to make forecasts about the implications of such actions.
What’s a neo-con? A person who can’t remember what happened 15 minutes ago, and certainly has no clue of what will happen 15 minutes from now.
The beautiful irony of being a “banned” book or author is the increase in publicity and sales due to the intolerance of a few ignorant wackos. Ergo, the opposite effect is created than intended and books/authors become more widely known and garner more support than they would had they been ignored.
What kids need are critical thinking skills so they can learn to weigh merits about penguins and weapons of mass destruction claims.
I don’t care if conservatives waste their time on this crap. I care when the MSM wastes mine on it instead of showing pics of dead soldiers and Iraqis.
Same old, same old.
Save us from the “good people” for which Ethnic Cleansing is so easy to rationalize.
Farenheight 451 anyone? One day we may be there God help us all!
“And Tango Makes Three,” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson. A Central Park Zoo zookeeper watches as two male penguins care for a rock as if it were an egg. He gives them a fertilized penguin egg, and the chick that hatches is named Tango. Opponents say the story promotes homosexuality and is inappropriate for 4- to 8-year-olds, the book’s intended audience.
**it also promotes zoos and captivity breeding programs as being a good thing. Zoos are bad! John Africa equated them with prisons-except the inmates havent committed any crime!
The penguins should have thrown the rock at the zookeeper.
EZEFLYER
how true. what a waste of space and trees.
KELMER
what does a 4-8 year old know about homosexuality in the first place? just seems like a twee story of two penguins taking care of another. unless of course there are subliminal messages……..hidden in the text. how pathetic. but i agree with your point on the zoo……..horrible places. and if mankind hadn’t devastated their habitat in the first place, or hunted them to near extinction, we wouldn’t need the zoos.
And God created gay penguins. Who are we to discount God’s gay creatures? They also are part of the devine.
based on this logic, the Lord of the Rings is a Gay Erotica novel.
“Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse? How many kids in primary and seconday Schools read Herman Hesse anyway? I surprised their parents are literate enough to read it but it’s obvious they are not literate enough to understand it. Must not have read the rest of Hesse’s novels or they would really have their knickers in a twist.
if children read about gay penguins, the terrorists win.
From evolution’s point of view, it’s more important that a lone and parentless baby penguin be raised at all than be left to starve. Who does the raising does not matter. Actually, in the wild most male birds of all kinds do a lot of the work of raising the young. (Perhaps I won’t stretch this to a comparison with human males).
FELIX4321: Exactly. Sure didn’t hurt Ms. Rollins!
Make that Rowlings (so much for Phonetics!)
“Siddhartha” was also banned by the Nazis, putting whoever banned it, this time, into a very select group. I’m surprised that “Fahrenheit 451″ didn’t make their banned book list.
The banning of almost anything is a bad idea in a supposedly free society. However if the right wing conservatives would quit pushing their “morality” down all of our throats and the “liberals” would quit trying to get homosexuality and rotten crude language into everything, we could all relax a little. One extreme breeds another and it seems to be getting worse.
With so many substansive issues to act on, it is scandalous that an organization wastes editorial time on such an issuue. Morever it violates our second amedndmdnt and only encourages futher publications of this type.
Vulgar language!? How awful!
Have these parents ever heard fifth-graders, including their own innocent little darlings, in the schoolyard? When I went to *Catholic* grammar school, I learned more profanitites in the schoolyard than I ever found in the books I read - and that includes the time I discovered my father’s volume of (unexpurgated) selections of Tales of the Arabian Nights.
Aren’t these the same people who don’t mind Iraqi children knowing a real war and all that it entails? Now that’s obscene!
“March of the Penguins” refused to say anything about global warming and the threat to penguin habitat, because that was deemed to be too controversial to the Right. Penguins and other species are in fact known to form homosexual pairings, and this fact is routinely censored. Subsequently, I have heard many people say that homosexuality is not natural because it does not occur among animal life. Censorship shapes our public understanding and debate, so that even facts are denied to be true if they interfere with political agendas.
Barn Burner
Don’t know about today, but we read Hesse at the high school I attended - several decades ago.
Shhh! Teens, don’t talk about those tingly feelings in you’re groin, theres bad things stirring down there called “pleasure” best to forget about them till you are an adult, instead, why don’t you play that new Maximum PC Mag CD demo game you got THIS month, its AnOther FPS…thats- First Person Shooter, yay! you get to shoot people in the head and watch their brains pop into a red mist, chop it off with that kewl sword or lob a grenade into the crowd, so much fun! AND, you’ll be much better prepared for war when the draft is reinstated! Ok kids, who wants PoP corn?
Please, no sex, just violence.
the righties hate it when NATURE proves them wrong. They claim being gay in unatural.
As felix4321 said on September 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm: “The beautiful irony of being a ‘banned’ book or author is the increase in publicity and sales due to the intolerance of a few ignorant wackos.” Please show your support by seeking out and buying these books, or by ordering them from your local library. Do something active to oppose this nonsense! Thank you.
Pattern-chaser
“Who cares, wins”
I firmly believe books do effect the minds of children and can be harmful. At the age of ten, my favorite novel that year was “Forever Amber”. After reading it several times, I fell in love with my fifth grade teacher, who was a georgeous redheaded, 38DD, and they fit the rest of her nicely porportioned body perfectly. I eventually recieved poor grades that year because I couldn’t think of much else, except to spend the rest of my life shacked up with Mrs Darlene Cummons.
As for the penguin story to be be associated with homosexual behaviour is really stupid. It is akin to think that the young boy in Michner’s “The Red Pony”, was in love with animals. Children who read that sexually explecit story may be inclined to have sex with a horse, a dzo or a goat. However, I do tend to believe, “Forever Amber” should be rated (xx) and not be available in schools for ten year old boys.
We shouldn’t complain when book banners try to ban books which are intended to counter the immense propaganda aimed at getting children to fear & hate the Other.
The right wing learned to couch all their propaganda in kindly terms — while some vociferously denounce gays, the mainline anti-homosexual groups cloak bigotry in the language of social science & religious rights; they speak of the harm done to children by same-sex parenting & ’studies’ done that ‘prove’ it & they talk of the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ — i.e., if you allow same-sex couples the same rights as different-sex couples, you are “dictating values”.
When their attacks on books are made public, it draws the attention of many to the real character & intent of those groups, whose intent is simply to eliminate from circulation any and every book that their children might one day stumble on.
The alternative is the situation at the end of “The Time Machine” (the film rather than the book) where the time traveller mentions books, and the Eloi leader says “Books? We have books” — books that have been kept unread and which turn to dust at a touch.
Back in the early seventies, when I was teaching, there was a group of religious right wingnuts trying to get Plato removed from the curriculum and libraries. Imagine. Plato. One of the central figures in Western civilization and thought.
The wingnuts, apparently, objected to the “moral relativism” and “secular humanism” of Plato/Socrates. I think they finally gave up on the idea when other wingnuts pointed out how stupid they looked.
Society’s role is to guarantee the freedoms, and certainly intellectual freedom among them, inherent in our Constitution.
Parents’ roles are to look after their own children, including in their reading activities.
I recall an edition of a Mark Twain title circulating quite a few years ago in some public school where the word “nigger” had been ruled out with a black marker throughout. No doubt the intentions were good, or one can hope, but distorting the original work perverts the valuable picture of our society in his time. Martin Luther King makes no sense if everything before the Civil Rights Movement is erased.
This is another example of religion at it’s finest. Or maybe I should say religion at it’s worst. The Christian nuts don’t want their children exposed to such reading material so the rest of our children suffer for it in the end. That’s what is guiding these people are their religious tenets. They aren’t kidding anyone. They are backed and encouraged by religious nuts determined to imposed their values on the rest of this country. So, I personally don’t believe the Religious Rights influence has wanned any. And I won’t until this bunch crawls back under the rock they crawled out from under. I remember reading some pretty racy books when I was in school which was close to 50 years ago. They were passed from kid to kid. You took it home, kept it under the mattress and read every lurid detail. You can’t keep reading material like that away from kids who are going to read it completely. That’s just the way it is.
I was just thinking the other day about Cathcher in The Rye. At the time is was so shocking…now it is so…yestereday! I wonder if it caused harm to those who read it? That generation was fodder for Viet Nam. Banning books should not be done in a free society. Wanna discuss how free our society is? That’s another post. It is up to parents and other adults to censor their own children or themselves.
I can not believe that Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha could be a banned book.
A book about the spiritual path to enlightenment of a young man; maybe likened to Buddha,or even Christ, could be found offensive, even by the most fundamentalist of the christian right. I read this book 40 years ago. I guess I’ll have to pull it out and find out what is so threatening to these ignorant zealots. Have mercy!
Insecurity and fear of change is tantamount in the prohibition of information, as in literature, films, music, or other forms of creativie expression. That is the nature of conservatism. It is a reactionary affront to progress in human developement and the community in general.
Siddhartha is one of my all-time favorit books. Most of Hess’ books are astral trips it’s no wonder neo cons can’t deal with it.
Next they will be banning all Medical books after all they contain sex and violence. Then there is the DSM-4, lots of crazy stuff there.
Hum….maybe they could just add neo-con to the DSMr-4.
Siddharta is the most beautiful book I have ever read, but then I too was a traveller in the East. A beautiful, gentle search for Truth, that elucidates the pure simplicity of that Truth. A tale of peace, beauty and release. No wonder that fascists hate it.
Fortunately the book is available in it’s entirety here:
http://www.online-literature.com/hesse/siddhartha/
And the river spoke Om.
“when I was teaching, there was a group of religious right wingnuts trying to get Plato removed from the curriculum and libraries. Imagine. Plato. One of the central figures in Western civilization and thought.”
The co-author of the “Left Behind” series came out of that “humanist-tradition-is-dangerous” bunch. I overheard an idiot salesman today giving someone the Darwin-leads-logically-to-Hitler talk — someone who’s never constructed a syllogism in his life, nor read a page of Darwin.
ekay, Siddartha was the story of Buddha. …I understand that Mark Twain’s book on Christian Science cannot be found in libraries, tho it is listed in the card file. Anyone know for sure?
Ignorant rabble must have a place in the food chain, somewhere, way down low.
Don’t hear about any neo-Chirstain leaders or popes taking a vow of poverty. Or any republican politicians not anxious to profit from this shit.
Just another non-issue to occupy the small brains of the masses; so they won’t see the big crimes of their government and their corporate rulers. Anyone know what it’s like to live in New Zealand. Ban many books there?
ezeflyer is right on the money but, look!-there go the lefties and humanitarians spending time on banned books instead of their protesting for no more war, etc.! Duh.
Treefrog - neo-cons are already in the DSM4 - under another name - “Paranoid Personality Disorder.” Possibly tinged with narcissism and sometimes violence. Practically impossible to cure.
Allblue
Thank you very for the link. I have a copy or two but can never find them. When I come across one I read it again. Thanks very much.
“Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades
of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful
verses. “Your soul is the whole world”, was written there, and it was
written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his
innermost part and would reside in the Atman. Marvellous wisdom was in
these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here
in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees. No, not to be looked
down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here
collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.–
But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or
penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all
knowledge but also to live it? Where was the knowledgeable one who wove
his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into
the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way,”
Grandma
I liked you post about penguins and how nurturing and parenting further our evolution.
Just as I wonder about the forces that create the neo-con world view.
@Rayberth
Siddharta is not the story of Buddha, who was an actual person, but a fictional tale of a contemporary of his. At one point Siddharta meets the Buddha, but he soon realises that although the Buddha is a wise and enlightened soul, he must find his own way, his own path to enlightenment. His life does in some way resemble Buddha’s, privilege, hedonism, asceticism, but Buddha attained enlightenment (under a bo tree in Bodh Gaya) in the middle of his life, whereas Siddharta is near the end of his when he hears the river, itself a metaphor - always changing, never still, but always there.
Every generation has to be protected from the boogymen. There was a time when the slogan “Banned in Boston” meant that this was something we had to see or hear or read. The song “I get Ideas” was in the top ten songs when it was banned. The book “Peyton Place” had been read everywhere when it was banned.
The social ethics police are most likely a collectively frustrated body of do-gooders venting their worries on whomever will listen. If there is something I do not like then I don’t watch it, or read it, or listen to it, etc. That doesn’t mean that others feel the same. They have the right to watch
(or read or listen to) whatever they please.
Allblue,
It is my sincere belief that the psychology area of study called “terror management theory” explains a hefty portion of our apparent nation’s rightward turn on 11 September 2001. This body of research verifies the adage…
“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Hermann Goering