Banned Mark Twain Book Let Back in Library 105 Years Later

In 1906, the Charlton Public Library of Charlton, Massachusetts banned Mark Twain's "Eve's Diary" and in 2011, they voted it back into the library.  Illustrations of a naked Eve (of famed couple Adam and) were the cause of the banning.  Twain himself took notice of "the freaks of the Charlton Library" as he called them in a 1907 letter.  The un-banning is part of the library's Banned Books Week display that starts next week.  NYTimes

About time.  I mean, wow, who's dragging their feet on this one?  I call conspiracy.

"Hey, Jimmy, we got a book here on the suggestion list."
"Oh, yeah, what is it?"
"Eve's Diary by Mark Twain."
"Twain?  Don't freaking think so.  Man still owes my great-grandma $1."
"I'm going over your head, Jimmy.  It ain't right.  This ain't your library."
"Oh God, I'm a monster, what have I become?  Let it back in."

End Scene

Banned Books Returned to Missouri Library. Sorta.

A little more than two months ago, a Missouri school board voted to remove Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler from the school library and curriculum after one man voiced a complaint.  After a public outcry of censorship, the board has recently voted to allow the books to return to the library, only in a secure fashion to be checked out by parents for independent student reading.  Some, including students, wonder if this is the right choice.

"Jaymes Haney, 17, said he didn't understand why the board acted on a complaint filed by a man who has no children in the district.
"One religious man's complaint and opinion has caused a review and affected 1,500 people," he said of the high school students. "Now they're putting it in the library and putting it in a secure location? Only parents can come in and check it out; it's not accessible."" Houston Chronicle

I am all for this mode of action.  "Wha?!" you say, "the books are there but harder to get to."  Yeah, I know.  They are also placed in a mysterious prison in a library filled with students.  That makes them special.  I read Harry Potter, I know kids will break all the rules to get at something they seem as 'forbidden'.  Plus, if the parents have to give permission to check out books, they know what the kid is reading.  I say the librarian go nuts and put the whole damn library in that section.  Who knows what dangerous ideas can be found in Junie B. Jones? And we all know Green Eggs and Ham is just capitalist propaganda.  Protect the children!

Let's take the words of John Ciardi and make them real again: "The [public] library is the most dangerous place in town."

Sherlock Holmes Banned In Virginia For Bashing Mormans

Last week the Albemarle County School Board voted to ban Sir Author Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" because they claim it contains derogatory comments about Mormanism.

Well boo-frickin-hoo.  One book makes a few comments about a random religion and you go all ban happy?  I can list you at least 100 books that were banned for better reasons than that.  These books take on whole races, creeds, ideas, and religions far more powerful than a folks who ride bikes, dress alike, and wake me up too early by knocking on my door to tell me they believe that a guy in the sky sent Jesus to hop the pond and talk to Indians.  I wonder why the logic loving Holmes wouldn't like them?

LATimes     DailyProgress

Vonnegut Library to Give Students Books, Not Take Them Away

I feel like I may have slacked a bit and for that I apologize.  For a website called Banned Library, I have overlooked an important issue that has happened in the past week.  A Missouri school district banned several books, including the classic Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  I did give a small retweet on the subject, but that was not enough.  Now I hear that the Vonnegut Library is offering free copies of the book to students of that school and my heart swells.

When I was younger, I had the great fortune and honor to hear Mr. Vonnegut speak.  I was a dumb high school kid with visions of writing the great American novel and yet had not read enough to know who the hilarious and cultured man on the stage was.  I only went because my art teacher gave me credit to give a short review of the speech.  The man on stage drawing on a chalk board and telling jokes changed my life, in how I view books, plots, characters, authors, and the people around me, the audience.  Afterward, I read most if not all of Mr. Vonnegut's books, some I got from the local library and some I scrounged from used book stores.  This man changed my life when I was young, stepped in at the right time and told me what literature should be, could be and was.  I am forever grateful.  I am sorry, Mr. Vonnegut, for allowing this injustice to pass.  Everyone should be allowed contact with your art, your message that the world is a strange, upsetting, hilarious mess. 

To the school district in Republic, Missouri: May you be humbled that while you refuse to teach your children the ways of the world, the world does not give a damn and will teach them anyway.  Please prepare them with our best weapons: books.

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Novel "Push" Pushed from from School Library

The novel "Push" by Sapphire (which was the basis of the movie Precious: based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire) has been removed from the Horry County School's libraries.  The book was not the only item removed from the libraries, simply cited as an example of an item removed because its content was deemed "inappropriate" by the school board, WCBD TV reports.

I do not think any material should be banned from a library.  Restricting knowledge must not be the point of any library, or school for that matter.  I did not sign up as a librarian to be a parent and hold your hand, you have a momma or daddy or aunt or whatever for that.  If you do not have a parental figure, then you already know some pretty harsh lessons and a book is not going to shock and awe you.

Schools and teachers in general are getting the short end of a very long stick in more ways than one, however.  AR reading lists and other backwards ways of thinking are hurting more than helping as they hinder not only what a child reads but how they read it.  A school librarian now-a-days has the horrid task of almost anti-readers advisory.  The choices are what the kid wants to read (if at all), what the kid has to read, and what the bureaucracy has allowed.

Coming from a kid who had read everything Stephen King had written before 7th grade, I applaud the librarian/teacher that even put this book in a middle school library.  Quality stories, themes and topics should be in the library, every library.  If you are afraid of talking with your kids about what they are reading or topics that you may find disturbing, keep them home and in their rooms and hopefully they will grow up well adjusted enough to have honest conversations with their inbred sister/daughters and brother/sons.