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<\/p>\nYou Can’t Read That! is a periodic roundup of news about banned and challenged books.<\/p>\n
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Arizona:<\/strong><\/p>\n Last month I wrote about<\/a> various groups planning to make banned Mexican American studies books<\/a> available to Tucson area students. Since then I’ve been receiving daily updates on one such group, the Librotraficante Caravan<\/a> … so many updates that I’m beginning to suspect their primary purpose is self-publicity<\/a>.\u00a0 I hope I’m wrong about that.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, two previously-reported Arizona school book-banning bills<\/a>, SB 1467 (which would ban books containing profanity) and SB 1202 (which would ban “partisan” books), are still being debated and have not yet made their way to the governor’s desk.<\/p>\n Elsewhere:<\/strong><\/p>\n “Fortunately, books I find disgusting simply don\u2019t get purchased by libraries or required by schools, saving me, and other like-minded individuals, from the embarrassing and hypocritical task of challenging them.”<\/em> \u201cHow can I raise my child in a Christian home when he is required to read about this?\u201d<\/em> Huffington Post headline: One Million Moms Threatens Toys ‘R’ Us With Boycott Over Archie Comics’ Gay Wedding Issue<\/a>.\u00a0 Yes, I just bet they did.<\/p>\n Waterland<\/em><\/a>, a novel I mentioned in a previous post<\/a>, has been judged fit for high school students and will remain on<\/a> a Michigan school district’s AP English reading list.<\/p>\n A high school district in Troy, Pennsylvania tables putting The Kite Runner<\/em> on the reading list<\/a> until board members have a chance to read it … or so they say.\u00a0 Based on other challenges and bannings I’ve written about, I have a hard time imagining school board members ever reading anything they’ve banned.<\/p>\n A Greenville, South Carolina middle school is reviewing a Sparknotes guide to Shakespeare’s plays<\/a> after a parent complained that the guide, which translates Shakespeare’s language into modern English, shockingly included translations of “anatomical terms.”\u00a0 Sadly, the linked article is hidden behind a paywall, but if you’re interested in what the parent is objecting to, here’s a link to a Sparknotes translation of Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n A public library in Victoria, Canada, bans a childrens’ picture book<\/a> that contains the words “red Indians.”\u00a0 Hey, haven’t these Canadians heard of the USA’s Huckleberry Finn solution<\/a>?\u00a0 You know what surprises me?\u00a0 That the book in question, Mog and the Granny<\/em><\/a>, was not written in 1914, but in 1995!<\/p>\n Retail censorship: PayPal threatens to cut off payments<\/a> to online publishers who market books featuring incest, rape or bestiality.\u00a0 So, would that include the Bible?\u00a0 Update:<\/em> PayPal backs down<\/a> … so long as the books in question do not contain pornographic images.<\/p>\n “Now some individuals have decided that Kirby is profiting from the death of one of the people killed by the orca Tilikum … and therefore his book should be banned.”<\/em>
\nA thoughtful essay<\/a> about anti-censorship progressives and the books they don’t want their children exposed to.<\/p>\n
\nThat’s what a parent said<\/a> about John Green’s young adult novel Looking for Alaska<\/em><\/a>. The local paper describes it as a book about “kids gone wild with porn, sex, drugs, alcohol, and death at a boarding school.”\u00a0 Sadly, the school board took the book off the required reading list for AP English.\u00a0 I’m willing to bet the offended parent took a sentence out of context and that the school board didn’t bother to read the book.\u00a0 Looking for Alaska<\/em> is on my to-read list, and I’ll review it here soon.<\/p>\n
\nWell, here’s an interesting new way to ban a book you don’t like: if the book deals with the death of an actual person, claim you’re only trying to respect that person’s memory<\/a>.<\/p>\n