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'Banned Books Week' Recognizes 2016's Most-Censored Books (and Comic Books) (newsweek.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Newsweek:
The American Library Association's yearly Banned Books Week, held this year between Sunday September 24 and Saturday September 30, is both a celebration of freedom and a warning against censorship. Launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, the event spotlights the risk of censorship still present... "While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read," the ALA stated.
"This Banned Books Week, we're asking people of all political persuasions to come together and celebrate Our Right to Read," says a coalition supporting the event. The ALA reports that half of the most frequently challenged books were in fact actually banned last year, according to the library group's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which calculates there were 17% more attempts to censor books in America in 2016. The five most-challenged books all contained LGBT characters, and the most common phrase used to complain about books is "sexually explicit," the OIF told Publisher's Weekly -- perhaps reflecting a change in targets. He believes one reason is that most challenges now are reported not for books in the library but against books in the advanced English curricula of some schools. This change also represents a shift upward in the age of the readers of the most challenged books. "We've moved from helicopter parenting, where people were hovering over their kids, to Velcro parenting," LaRue says. "There's no space at all between the hand of the parent and the head of the child. These are kids who are 16, 17; in one year they're going to be old enough to sign up for the military, get married, or vote, and their parents are still trying to protect them from content that is sexually explicit. I think that's a shift from overprotectiveness to almost suffocating."
Three of the 10 most-challenged books were graphic novels, so the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is sharing their own list of banned and challenged comics.
Their list includes two Neil Gaiman titles, Sandman and The Graveyard Book , as well two popular Batman titles -- Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke -- plus Moore's graphic novel Watchmen, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and even Amazing Spider-Man: Revelations by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita, Jr.
"This Banned Books Week, we're asking people of all political persuasions to come together and celebrate Our Right to Read," says a coalition supporting the event. The ALA reports that half of the most frequently challenged books were in fact actually banned last year, according to the library group's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which calculates there were 17% more attempts to censor books in America in 2016. The five most-challenged books all contained LGBT characters, and the most common phrase used to complain about books is "sexually explicit," the OIF told Publisher's Weekly -- perhaps reflecting a change in targets. He believes one reason is that most challenges now are reported not for books in the library but against books in the advanced English curricula of some schools. This change also represents a shift upward in the age of the readers of the most challenged books. "We've moved from helicopter parenting, where people were hovering over their kids, to Velcro parenting," LaRue says. "There's no space at all between the hand of the parent and the head of the child. These are kids who are 16, 17; in one year they're going to be old enough to sign up for the military, get married, or vote, and their parents are still trying to protect them from content that is sexually explicit. I think that's a shift from overprotectiveness to almost suffocating."
Three of the 10 most-challenged books were graphic novels, so the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is sharing their own list of banned and challenged comics.
Their list includes two Neil Gaiman titles, Sandman and The Graveyard Book , as well two popular Batman titles -- Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke -- plus Moore's graphic novel Watchmen, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and even Amazing Spider-Man: Revelations by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita, Jr.
Why is it not a rule that you have to actually read the book before you ban it? Or did the censor completely miss the message of the book?
This one is from a public library so I have no idea what the problem with the age group is. It also shows another complete lack of understanding of the material.
I read the internet for the articles.
...in other words, books?
Ezekiel 23:20
Mein Kampf is banned in many countries.
The way it was implemented is a bit uncommon because it uses the copyright law : Hitler's property was seized by the government of Bavaria, including Mein Kampf copyright, and it was used to block the sales.
I really think that no list of banned books should be without it. Because it shows that censorship is not just about LGBT stuff, it is also about what "progressives" find despicable. And if you really are against censorship, you should also fight for Mein Kampf to be available.
It also shows that copyright abuse is a form of censorship.
I suspect it wasn't a case of Holocaust Deniers in power somewhere, and more likely just because of the nudity shown in certain frames.
All of this censorship is based on so-called Christian values and morals.
Those of us who don't subscribe to that school of thought should be left alone to decide what we will or will not read.
Don't ever show these parents the mangas they have in Japan. They'll die from overexposure to nudity and sex the likes they've never seen before.
#DeleteFacebook
You might want to look at who's trying to censor speech these days. Shouting down speakers they disagree with, demanding web hosts take down customers they disagree with, demanding schools change their names, rewriting history in wikipedia, rewriting definitions in dictionaries, tearing down statues.
It's only a matter of time before these so-called progressives start burning books. They'll claim the books were written by racists, or nazis, or whatever villain de jure they are using, and therefore it is all just and good.
I know, right? Ever since they tore down the statue of Robert E. Lee, I can't remember who won the Civil War.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The only books we have are ones that were banned by other schools. The kids have to learn about Tek War sooner or later....
Unfortunately, no one has yet seen fit to add Trump: The Art of The Deal, nor any of Mr Orange's other fine examples of American literature, to their banned books lists. I guess he never even considered using the slogan, Make American Books Great Again, since he obviously had nothing to lend to that fight.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Ever since they tore down the statues of Stalin, I can't remember who won World War II.
The summary says most of the challenges are NOT about public libraries, but about school curriculum. One example being ELEMENTARY school having kids read about a transgender child.
So yes, "appropriate for age group" is a very valid concern - there are certainly books that are available to adults, but we shouldn't force all third and fourth graders to read them.
Multiple books on the list were about transgender children, presenting that as normal. It could well be argued that parents shouldn't be putting their children through multiple surgeries and heavy doses of unnatural hormones to turn a boy into a girl or vice versa, in the vast majority of cases. That's the kind of thing a person ought to decide for themselves, making an informed decision when they are an adult, some would say.
One might reasonably think that having surgeries done on your little boy to turn him into a little girl may, in many cases, be child abuse, so forcing elementary school kids to read that is normal may not be appropriate.
I don't care to argue for or against on any of these issues, but they are certainly issues on which reasonable people may disagree. On such issues, perhaps the government schools shouldn't be forcing this stuff on grade-school kids. If you want to teach your kids that it's normal to chop off a little boys penis, you can do that, but I don't see that you have a need or a right to force that on every other family.
People do generally ignore books that are poorly written and/or otherwise painful reads.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
They should be censoring the SJW propaganda garbage that Marvel calls comic books right now.
Yeah, it's *unrealistic* that women have superpowers. Obviously only men do because of evolution.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Girl: Granny, were you aloud to stay out after 9:00 when you were 15
Granny: Yes. In fact when I was on late shift in the mill I finished at 9 and by the time I's walked home it was 9:30.
These books aren't banned. You can buy them in every state in the union. This is just a ploy for the SJWs in the library cliques to shake down the public for more money and attention. They don't like to have any "community involvement" that doesn't correspond to their narrow set of SJW prejudices and must constantly lobby to get their way over the ignorant plebs.
Watchmen was obviously banned for its big blue cock, which was brought to attention by the movie, where it seemed a million times more gratuitous than in the comic
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is that the same liberals that wants to ban free speech when it disagrees with their "approved" belief set, that throws water bombs filled with urine or bottles filled with cement? Those liberals?
Or the liberals who cheerfully destroy the careers of comic artists who commit the unpardonable din of drawing a sexualized image of a woman in the cover of a comic book?
-Styopa
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can recall when 1987 at the great liberal institution on SUNY New Paltz they banned Uncle Toms Cable and Huckleberry Finn because they were considered offensive.
> In conclusion, I agree on the part that no one should have the right to force or forbid on kids reading books. The decision should be on their parents. Thus, some books should be banned from public schools but no book should be banned from public libraries.
I agree, in general. Adults can generally decide for themselves what they want to do, including what they want to read. That's entirely different from what they force all children to do and to read.
I also know the public library, which we all pay for, has a certain budget and a certain amount of space, so they can get X number of new books each year. Though we're all paying for the books, only one or two or perhaps three people choose the books we buy for our public library. I'm sure that group time to time the person choosing the books picks mostly books pushing their favored political idealogy and world-view. That should be resisted.
You can certainly imagine someone saying "wait a minute, our library can't afford an unabridged dictionary, but can afford four copies of each of Trump's 19 books? Or no new science books, but a dozen new books about transgender children? One might reasonably challenge some of the Trump books, or the transgender kids books, as being less essential / less appropriate than other options that would otherwise be purchased with that money. That's a fundamental difficulty in American politics and culture - about half the population says "this sounds good, so we should do it", forgetting that means spending our resources there INSTEAD OF somewhere else. About half of us just don't "get it" that resources or limited, no matter what the topic, so the argument isn't "this might be okay, we should do it", we need to be able to say "this is the very best possible use of available resources, so we should do this rather than spending the money on anything else."
You lost me at Jesse Ventura. This sounds like book that can be ignored without harming the world.
I still trip out that you can watch 2 future governors fight Predator.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I think there is a major difference between preventing your kinds from reading something and standing up for your kids right to NOT read something they don't want.
On the college level, when parents get involved , from my experience it is almost always the latter. I young adult is in a class and being told you will read XYZ or I will fail you. The young person reaches out to parents for help because they consider XYZ to be , offensive, demeaning, demoralizing, prejudice , or in some other way immoral, and do not want to read it or participate in discussion about it. Especially when they point out repeatedly to the professor how they feel about the work and why are then demeaned and persecuted for being , prudish, old fashioned, or not worldly enough, or prejudiced.
I saw this happen to more then one of my friends in various classes in college, and near as I can tell it is only getting worse. If you are someone who doesn't agree with the morality taught at the 'secular' university then you can be expected to be persecuted by the teachers for disagreing or debating them , especially about literature.
As the article points out, 'what's wrong with reading explicit sex scenes?'. If you don't understand the question you are probably part of the problem.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Reaching out to your parents about having to read an assigned book in college... that's just absurd. If you don't have the intellectual fortitude to hold up and examine a piece of literature, I guess there's trade school.
> I think most librarians and bibliophiles would find that suggestion offensive.
I've suggested that library funds ought NOT be used entirely to push a particular political agenda, that perhaps a library should buy an unabridged dictionary before it buys dozens of "transgender children" books. I'm sure that idea, that basic English is more important than their political ideology, offends some people, but I don't think MOST.
I also suggested that basic science books may, in some cases, be more important than having even more copies of each of Trump's books.
> Literature from opposing viewpoints is important.
Opposing what? 100% of Library Association leadership who donated in 2016 donated to Democrats only. ALA leaders think opposing Trump is important, important enough to spend their own money on. Assuming they are human, their biases will affect their ideas of which advocacy works are good and should be purchased for the library. They'd not be human if they weren't affected by their own bias.
Personally, I think that when presenting one side of a contentious issue, the other side should also be presented as well - "some people think this, other people think that". Even more important for a school or public library, I think, is the basic, non-contentious science, math etc which can be used to evaluate ALL arguments. I would start with reference works such as dictionaries, almanacs, an atlas etc, before getting into opinion pieces or advocacy works which should reference those reference works. For example, a reader can't make an informed evaluation of how a tax cut or tax increase may affect the federal budget unless they first know what mandatory spending and discretionary spending are. The school or library should have material for people to find out what the federal budget currently is, and how it's created and analyzed, before buying more stuff advocating what someone thinks the budget should be.
To be informed a issues relating to "transgender children", rather than merely progandized, it would be of great help to have books for people to learn about what chromosomes are, what hormones are and how they affect our bodies, etc.
In other words, I think government, both government schools and government-funded libraries, should seek FIRST to inform, before they advocate. Someone who has read about chemistry and other sciences can make up their mind about acid rain, presenting a lot of stuff about acid rain while refusing to stock chemistry books is propagandizing people, not educating them.
Additionally, advocacy groups already do a pretty good job of getting their message out. The tax payer doesn't need to be assisting the NRA and the MoveOn as much as we need to be helping people get informed on the objective facts, in my opinion. So when we're at the bottom of the list, we can afford one more book, I'd prefer a fact-based book about actual historic events over anything put out by either MoveOn or the NRA. The advocates can fight it out on CNN and Fox, in my opinion.
I don't think you have a right to refuse to read the assigned material in a collegiate course. It'd be like creationists demanding biology degrees while refusing to read the material. And if the students resort to calling in their parents in college that's almost reason enough to kick them out of the course right there...
Newsweek misleads by giving examples of common books like Harry Potter and Moby Dick being banned or criticized in the past. The actual poster from the group leading the banned books list , NONE of Newsweek's examples are there, NOT a SINGLE ONE. Here is there poster of ACTUAL books they are complaining about being 'banned', I would lump them in as religious text of the left http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/wp-... .
You probably think Ulysses S. Grant was a great general and decent human being, don't you?
He wasn't; in fact, Grant was a terrible person who flat out refused to free his personal slaves until years after the Civil War ended. Conversely, the 'rebel scum' Robert E. Lee voluntarily freed his slaves before the war's end, and in fact was an outspoken opponent of owning humans.
But most people don't know those facts, because it's not in the history books they teach from.
That's how history is re-written - by sins of omission.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
No, Grant was a horrible human being. And Lee was a traitor who fought to protect slavery while trying to assuage his guilt by freeing his own slaves.
Whether or not we tear down their cheaply-made Jim Crow-era statues is not going to change history one bit. There are no statues of Hitler in Germany, but I'm pretty sure Germans know who he is and what he did.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And yet somehow both the Twilight and 50 Shades series were blockbuster sellers that turned into movies. ::sigh::
I saw this happen to more then one of my friends in various classes in college, and near as I can tell it is only getting worse. If you are someone who doesn't agree with the morality taught at the 'secular' university then you can be expected to be persecuted by the teachers for disagreing or debating them , especially about literature.
Yeah, and...? If your friends don't want to read certain material, they should be reading the syllabus for the class and dropping the class if it contains material they don't want to read. If you signed up for the course and want credit for the course, you do the work required by the course. That's how it is. Don't like it? Don't take the course.
Or, they could be adults, and read the material. If their worldview is so very fragile that exposure to objectionable material could shatter it, maybe they're the ones with the problem.
But of course neither of those solutions is preferred, is it? The whole point is to take the course, demand special treatment, not get it, and conclude the world is out to get you and your friends, and you're therefore a persecuted minority who must double down on your beliefs in order to hold out against the world. Yes, we're familiar with the techniques. They're commonly used by cults to isolate victims from society.
^ and this, kids, is how an American "liberal" responds to someone disagreeing with them.
See? "Open minded", clearly.
-Styopa