ALA 08-09 Banned & Challenged Books List

It came out in PDF. Which sucks.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites that wound up on the list:

Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. Atlantic Monthly Pr. Removed from a classroom at Central Lafourche High School in Raceland, La. (2008) for violating the district policy on cursing. The book is the story of a failed Special Forces mission in Somalia.
I wonder how many of the kids in that district are going into the military?

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper. Retained in the Coeur D’Alene, Idaho School District (2008) despite objections that the book has too many references to sex and drug use.
I don’t like Brave New World, because it scares the crap out of me. It scares the crap out of me because I can see many, many parallels between Huxley’s future and our media-driven, pop culture worshipping life. The drug use and sex is not glamourized, but is indicative of the society’s decay. And now that I sound like Fox News, NEXT BOOK!

Heinlein, Robert A. The Day After Tomorrow. Signet. Removed from the Beardstown, Ill. High School library (2008). A parent requested its removal and a committee determined the novel “rather very adult in nature” and, because the library already had a large selection of other valuable science fiction and spy literature, the committee elected to remove the book from the high school’s circulation and donated it to the public library.
Dear Beardstown, Ill. High School committee: Fuck you. The book’s main theme is about defeating racism and oppression. Fuck you, you fucking fucks. No love, Mary Sue.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Lippincott/ Harper; Popular Library. Retained in the Englishcurriculum by the Cherry Hill, N.J. Board of Education (2007). A resident had objected to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression. The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it.
And next, this resident is going to object to history books having information on the Civil Rights Movement because black children are going to be upset that America hasn’t done enough to guarantee their rights since that time. I wonder if this resident wants to ban Bill O’Reilly, too, because he makes President Obama upset about being black.

This one pisses me off to no end. I love this book, because my mother loved this book. Shoot, her dog’s name is Scout.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt. Challenged in Burke County schools in
Morgantown, N.C. (2008) by parents concerned about the homosexuality, rape, and incest portrayed in the book.
Because that never happens in Morgantown, N.C., I betcha. Bite me, Burke County parents.

Meyer, Stephenie H. Twilight Series. Little. Removed from and later reinstated in the middle school libraries of the Capistrano, Calif. Unified School District (2008). The books were initially ordered removed by the district’s instructional materials specialist, who ordered that the books be moved from middle school to high school collections. That order was rescinded and the books remain in the middle school libraries. Challenged at the Brockbank Junior High in Magna, Utah (2009), by a parent over sexual content in the Mormon author’s fourth novel, Breaking Dawn.
Surprised I’m highlighting these books? Let me explain why: the books are trash. They are utterly useless, promote girls to forego all their dreams and desires if a man loves them, and generally make me throw up in my mouth. But if it’s between taking these books out of a school library or having a child who doesn’t read pick one up because everyone keeps talking about it, I’m 100% going with aiding and abetting a child’s love of reading.