You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books.
Apparently the problem some Americans have with Huckleberry Finn affects Belgians as well. They were actually going to ban a Tintin book written in 1931 on grounds of racism … thankfully, a court has intervened.
The manager of a Michigan country club canceled a scheduled appearance by Richard Dawkins after discovering the famous atheist is, uh, an atheist.
Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things and changed the world … in spite of the fact that his work has been banned at nearly every juncture of history.
Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a policeman entered the Chelmsford Massachusetts public library and demanded the librarian hand over all books by Jack Kerouac on the grounds that they were “unfit.” Read the rest.
Hooray: the Glendale California school board okays the continued reading of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
Boo: the Brookfield Connecticut school board is considering banning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
Hooray, boo, hiss: the Charlestown South Carolina school isn’t banning Bret Lott’s The Hunt Club after all, but is considering a plan to make teachers notify parents whenever “adult-themed” books are to be taught. What do you think most teachers will do? I’ll take a guess … they won’t assign The Hunt Club.
I don’t usually include book banning news from outside the Americas, but since I led off with Belgium, here are two interesting stories from England: