Book Banning

In my English reading, I had/got to read about the issue of book banning. After reading two quite good articles, I went to the American Library Association, and saw the kind of things they have on their banned book list. Some of the things there really don't need to be- for example, "Huckleberry Finn" is commonly challenged by communities, and called racist. Some other classic books were on the list, such as:
"Bridge to Terabithia", (Katherine Petersen)... I saw this movie.
"The Catcher in the Rye", (J D Salinger) ..Haven't read it... but it is supposedly a classic
"A Wrinkle in Time", (Madeleine L'Engle).. awesome book!
"The Witches" (by Roald Dahl...), Who doesn't like everything Roald Dahl wrote?
"To Kill a Mockingbird", ( Harper Lee)... another classic???
"A Light in the Attic",(Shel Silverstein!!), Ahh!!! Why did they ban this book... I own it and love it!
"Brave New World", (Aldous Huxley),.. Read this. Very thought provoking. Not for little kids, though. (what classics really are?)
"James and the Giant Peach", (Roald Dahl) Roald again! What grudge do they have against him?
"The Face on the Milk Carton", (Caroline Cooney) read it.. and some others by her. Not little kid material. But fairly good stories.
"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", (Mark Twain).. COME ON!!! what on earth is so objectionable about this?
"How to Eat Fried Worms".... (Thomas Rockwell).. ok,... this might not be a classic... but I read it, and so has Benjy and my mom... and it's not bad. Funny.

Is "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, a classic? I have heard of it.. :-) so it MUST be... lol
Some others on this list, I have read, but aren't quite classics...

like: "The Headless Cupid" by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. (In the childrens' section of our library.)
Since "Lord of the Flies" is in every literature program I have seen so far, (including the Progeny Press that sells homeschool stuff...) I should probably read it, too.

Ooh... Another book by Louis Sachar? "The boy who lost his face"... hmm.... maybe I shall have to check that out?

I have heard of, but not read "The Giver" by Lois Lowry....
"Harry Potter" is on the list.... mmm... I am not going to say anything about this.. other than that I read them, and don't have too much of a problem with them- but they're not little kid books.


A trend on this list: The only things on it are
1. homosexual promoting, (yech! These ones are the ones I think deserve to be on this list...)
OR
2. Classics! Or at least, books that have been around for awhile....and aren't too horrible...


One thing that they seem to forget, goes along with this quote on the ALA website...

"DON'T JOIN THE BOOK BURNERS

Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It's almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions.

And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned, or it's not America.

—Dwight David Eisenhower"

Ok... What part of this do they not understand? Isn't the Bible a book? Why does the ALA not put the Bible on their list, despite that it is banned from schools all over the country? Why do they not place it at the very top, considering the fact that it is the most opposed book in the world?
And why do they quote this, and yet refuse to let us have a Bible at school? Or have a Bible-study in a classroom? There is definitely an inconsistency here!

Here is one more awesome quote:

“[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .”—Johann Lorenz Schmidt, 1741