You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books.
ArIzona:
At least one Tucson Unified School District supervisor is embarrassed by the national and international furor over book-banning. The funny thing is that he’s one of the persons responsible.
Meanwhile, activists continue to push back. It’s Tucson Freedom Summer!
Nice video:
[youtube width=”500″ height=”405″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Su3YU9KDs4[/youtube]
Elsewhere:
“In Canada and the U.S. there are both right wing and left wing book banners.” False equivalence? Not really, I’m ashamed to admit. Interesting essay on book banning efforts in North America.
Literature dealing with hot-button topics such as AIDS and child abuse are okay for classroom use … so long as those works have happy endings. These are the rules, according to the administrative board of the Fremont Unified School District in California.
More on Fremont, California: book banning in a blue district.
Our Republican friends are always reciting talking points. Here are some talking points we can use to defend the books we love, courtesy of the American Library Association.
Last month it was Texas. This month it’s Tennessee, where tea partiers are lobbying for depressingly predictable changes to school textbooks.
Banning Teh Gay: a slide show of 16 banned & challenged books with gay themes or elements, along with brief descriptions of the challenges filed against them.
Now this sounds like my kind of library!
Vatican bans book, sales go up … you’d think they’d learn.
It’s interesting to compare the British list of banned books with the American list.
This recap of book challenges in Missouri is interesting and revealing. That Missouri is my natal state makes it cringeworthy as well.
Sadly, last year’s teabagger-inspired book banning battle in Missouri has had its intended effect: school librarians have knuckled under (this is the saddest article I’ve read in three years of doing these columns).
“So thank you, Mr. Vonnegut, for something. I don’t know what exactly. It’s sad, and funny, and very pointless, but, you know, there it is.” An amazingly touching letter to Kurt Vonnegut.