The forbidden library

[A_Wanderer]

If there was not a society that was willing to ban these books (apart from the ridiculous retroactive bannings such as the offence over ****** Jim in the name of political correctness ~ so very 90's ) then I doubt that they would be as profound or even have been created.

 

[echo0001]

As Pax says, a wise person once remarked, "The best way to get a kid to read a book is to ban it."

I have seen first hand evidence of this myself.

Several years ago, one parent objected when the book Lisa, Bright and Dark was assigned to her kid's high school class here. The school debated what to do about it, and in a show of moderate intelligence, took the book off the list of candidates for assigned reading. They did NOT, however, remove the book from the high school library. They did not take it away completely.

My niece assured me that for the next couple of months you couldn't really check the book out from the high school library--because so many kids were on the reserve list and you would have to wait forever. For the next couple of months, the book was also constantly checked out from both of our public libraries, too.

 

[FizzingWhizzbees]

This may be a little off-topic, but I'm curious to know if anyone else has read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman? These are some of my favorite books ever and I've always smirked at how many people think the Harry Potter books are evil and should be burned and this brilliant series contiues to go unnoticed...

I love the His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman is one of my favourite authors. I think possibly the reason the books are ignored by people who would otherwise be offended by their content is simply that they're less high profile than the Harry Potter books. I can't imagine that people who decided to burn the His Dark Materials books would receive quite so much attention from the media as those who burned copies of the latest Harry Potter book.

To be honest, I would have thought the His Dark Materials books would be more offensive to Christians* than the Harry Potter books considering their subject matter and the religious references they contain.

*Please note - I'm referring specifically to those Christians who choose to burn Harry Potter books not all Christians, but I'm trying to avoid the use of labels which some people find offensive.

 

[Golightly Grrl]

are you there God?

it's me, Irvine.

When I was a little girl, my mom got me the book "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret." I was the only one in my 5th grade class whose mother allowed her to read Judy Blume books. However, that did not stop me from passing the book around to my fellow 5th grade brethern. By the time I got the book back, it was in tatters.