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<\/p>\nYou Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups.<\/p>\n
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YCRT! Mini-Rant<\/strong><\/p>\n Here’s a Bookriot editorial on the overuse of scare phrases<\/a> like “book banning.” Wait a minute! I use the phrase, but (I like to think) carefully\u00a0and with intent. Here’s my rationale, paraphrased from earlier YCRT! posts:<\/p>\n I find I have to explain my use of the word “banned” every so often.\u00a0My position is that any time someone tries to restrict access to a book in order to prevent people from reading it, that’s banning\u00a0… even if the ban affects only one school, library, or bookstore, and the book can be found elsewhere.<\/p>\n The US Post Office once officially banned Henry Miller’s\u00a0Tropic of Cancer<\/em>. People would argue\u00a0it wasn’t really<\/em> banned, because you could always hop on an ocean liner, go to Paris, and buy a copy there.<\/p>\n We hear the same argument today. “So your teacher can’t assign\u00a0Sherman Alexie’s The Diary of a Part-Time Indian<\/em>, and it isn’t on the shelves in the school library? So what? You can still get a copy on Amazon, can’t you?”<\/p>\n The problem is school districts in several states have bowed to those who want to control what others read\u00a0and taken books away to\u00a0prevent students from reading them. This is book banning.<\/p>\n Merriam-Webster backs me up on my\u00a0assertion that banning, however localized, is still banning. This is a usage example from M-W’s entry on\u00a0the word ban<\/a>: “The school banned that book for many years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I rest my case (until next year, when I’ll have to post this again).<\/p>\n YCRT! News Roundup:<\/strong><\/p>\n An\u00a0argument against the use of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States<\/em><\/a> as a text in high school history classes.\u00a0Here’s a YCRT!\u00a0review<\/a>\u00a0of A People’s History<\/em>, if you’re interested in my take.<\/p>\n Patriotic parents combat creeping sharia<\/a> in Florida schools.<\/p>\n In an earlier post I mentioned a scary poll showing increasing public support for book banning. This article<\/a> goes into more detail on the poll and its results.<\/p>\n South Carolina\u00a0high school principal caves<\/a>, pulls Courtney Summers’ Some Girls Are<\/em> from a summer reading list after a single parental complaint, bypassing his district’s\u00a0book review policy.<\/p>\n Another principal caves<\/a> to parental\u00a0complaints, pulling\u00a0Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time<\/em> from a Tallahassee, Florida high school summer reading list, end-running school district policy. Here’s a more in-depth look at the banning of the book<\/a>\u00a0in Tallahassee and elsewhere.<\/p>\n This is a little different: residents of\u00a0Pleasant Grove, Utah asked the city council to remove R-rated movies from the public library<\/a>, but for now at least the council has decided not to interfere in library decisions. There are only eight R-rated movies in the library’s catalog, and patrons under the age of 18 can’t check them out anyway.<\/p>\n Every now and then I see a Facebook post that isn’t just a photo of someone’s cat:<\/p>\n It’s easy to scoff at the college campus trigger warning<\/a> zealots, but what if administrators use\u00a0student complaints as an excuse to fire tenured professors they don’t like but can’t get rid of by other means?<\/p>\n I’ve been keeping an eye on a\u00a0book-banning\u00a0organization called Safe Libraries<\/a>, which in addition to attacking books frequently\u00a0goes after\u00a0public libraries and the American Library Association with trumped-up charges about librarians encouraging\u00a0patrons to\u00a0surf child porn sites on library computers. The charges are false, but Safe Libraries makes a lot of noise, even sending\u00a0speakers out\u00a0on the road\u00a0to rile up\u00a0communities\u00a0with scary slide shows<\/a> about the\u00a0dangers of local libraries. I think (but admit I don’t know) that Safe Libraries is behind a recent attempt to shut down a public library<\/a> in Orland Park, Illinois.<\/p>\n![\"sticker](\"https:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/769\/20686178488_ff2077f07e_z.jpg\")
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