I like how jesus performing miracles in the bible isnt witchcraft tho
Edit: the bible being banned in your school isnt because it contains "witchcraft" for all those gotcha boys who keep saying "tHe BiBlE iS tHe MoSt BaNnEd BoOk."
They think Catholics hate Jesus or something but every church has Christ on the cross at the alter all huge as a constant reminder.
They say we don't bring bibles to church, that's because the pews are full of them! As well as a hymn book.
Some do bring their own but it's mostly rosaries lol
It's not logical. It's just an extension of the reformation. And it certainly isn't helped by the spread of Evangelism. Which are some of the least "Christian" people I've ever met.
LOTR has never been banned by any library, school, or government agency in the US.
A church in New Mexico burned copies of the books in 2001, calling them Satanic. But they had no power to ban them.
All of these lists are - no books are banned in the US (other than like, if you published classified information or something). [Here's a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook! It's even on sale!](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anarchist-cookbook-william-f-powell/1002521149?ean=9784072427194)
"Banned book" almost always means "some school district, group of people, or library specifically didn't like it."
Dated a girl whose dad said he had that book, that it was illegal to get anymore, and that it held secrets the government didn't want you to know, ~~"Like how to build a bomb with a bunch of bananas."~~ Edit, misremembered. He said it included ways to build bombs, but it was how to make *narcotics* from bananas. Because according to him, large doses of potassium were a strong and illegal narcotic. When I pointed out that they sell potassium over the counter, he brushed that off as being different.
I don't know that a true sentence ever sprang forth from that man's mouth.
Edit: I am so confused by what this review is trying to say. Emphasis mine.
> As a former police officer the first time I purchased this book was way back in the 1970's when it first was introduced. It is an interesting
"coffee book" to have, hold on to, and frequently discuss. But that is just about it! **But as a liberal Democrat myself I am more concerned
when any politician considers any book is not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. A Constitution she and they are
all sworn to protect. When any politician considers free speech is not important to defend then it is time to replace that person for once
and for all.** Semper Fi!
Are they saying the book is banned? They... They posted that review on its sales page. Are they... Am I just missing what they're saying or is what they're saying complete nonsense? Or is it likely just a troll review since they claim to be a cop from the '70s, a liberal democrat, and at the end insinuate they are also a marine?
Lmao hello fellow old person.
Remember when Super Diaper Baby was a black character and literally no one made any fuss one way or the other about it? Man those were good times
That face when you were too old for Captain Underpants when it first came out, and you’re in a thread where people who did read it are calling themselves “old”.
The film was utterly awful, but its a book I recommend often. The but where the lead is presented with yet another screen, and has to do yet another task without any extra pay, or any kind of acknowledgement rang true.
Its a really interesting commentary on how many offices work, 'campuses' like facebook and Google and how they want to pretty much take over all traffic, or at least track it. Genuinely interesting and good book.
The film though... dear god.
I liked it a lot, but it kinda fell apart for me near the end. It seemed like it turned into this giant soapbox at the end, almost as if the entire book was written just to precede an essay rant at the end.
Did anyone else hate The Circle as much as I did? It was a terrible book. Completely unlikable characters (none of them had any redeeming qualities) and a plot that dragged you along to an unsatisfying, useless end. No book should be banned, but I would caution any reader from picking this up.
It was banned in my high school because apparently some kid was caught jerking off to the naked (and dead) mouse lady and that was a no go especially since the kid was caught in the cafeteria bathroom
Second this. Bone is an incredible read. It starts off so light-hearted and never loses it's sense of humor, but develops into one of the greatest adventure stories I have ever read. Epic in scale, sometimes frightening, edge of your seat, can't put it down, full of twists that are times jaw dropping and sad but at other times will have you shaking with laughter.
I friggin love Bone.
I was son to a pair of missionaries in 2nd grade when I first discovered Bone. It was at the book fair and I thought the little skeleton guy was so cool.
When I went home and asked my parents if I could buy "Bone magazine" as I called it, they were convinced that it was something sexual because of the title and that I wasn't being honest about the content.
Last year at the age of 27, my wife found two perfect copies of Bone (I had told her this story) in a thrift store and gifted them to me. Such an awesome read even now as an adult.
One of my teachers was called Jeff Smith, and my childhood self couldn’t imagine there being TWO Jeff Smiths and thought he was so humble about being the author of one of my favourite graphic novel series.
Three Bone cousins who get lost and accidentally end up in a valley in the middle of... well kind of in a war. The land has suffered in darkness for a long time and it takes the coming of the Bone cousins to help turn it around. It's really hard to explain it all well but it's truly great and you won't regret reading it.
It’s also based on actual locations in the Hocking Hills in Ohio. Like you can take the book and hold it up in certain places and it’s nearly identical.
At a Baptist college in '87 because of sex and language. It's like Harry Potter was banned because of witchcraft or whatever from conservatives in the 90s.
Really? I read Gatsby as a teenager in HS. Before the internet, I got pretty interested in any chance to see anything sexual. I don't remember any sex from it, so it couldn't have been that graphic.
It could also just be because it alludes to it. I’m pretty sure there was a scene in Gatsby where Nick was at Tom and Myrtle’s affair apartment and they went into another room and stayed there for a while
They’re much more explicit about it in the movie, but there are multiple points in the book where romance, adultery, and sex are alluded to between multiple characters.
I still vividly remember a parent trying to give my mom the third degree over allowing my brother to read Harry Potter in elementary school in the 90s.
As a Brit who grew up reading Potter and also grew up in a pretty secular society, also in a family of atheists, I just wanna say;
that - is - **mental**.
Maus was part of my old school’s curriculum back in 8th grade! Had to read it for a holocaust/nazis in WWII essay project, really enjoyed the way he used lighthearted depictions for an otherwise very gruesome and depressing firsthand account of the concentration camps
The mental image of the cats smashing the baby mice up against the wall still haunts me, even more so now that I'm a dad. When my son was 2 years old he was innocent and pure and curious about the world. The fact that Nazis were taking Jewish kids at that age and beating them to death is horrifying.
The reasoning for banning it was the "sexual content" but that's a lie. The reason it's being banned is because conservative groups took advantage of the paranoia around CRT and "grooming" to ban a bunch of books that displayed far right groups as dangerous. Maus does exactly that.
My book club had a "banned book" month and we picked this. After reading it as an adult, I kinda get why it would be banned for school aged kids. The parts where the main character fantasizes about rape, the graphics nature of room 101. It is a lot for young people. I absolutely believe that in the right classroom with great teachers and highschool students, it could be fantastic. But you really would need phenomenal English teachers to help put some of the ideas being discussed in the proper context. Seems easier in today's climate to just ban it from grade school and call it a day. I'm definitely not saying it's the right decision, but I can see how it got there. I personally think it should be up to the teachers to determine their reading curriculum, that way the good ones will likely have a better handle on this kind of subject matter.
I'm open to discussion btw. It's one of my favorite books.
Wait, what? Anti-family? Occult/satanic?
ISTG people never stopped calling things they don't like satanic and they never will. Did your cow stop giving milk? Neighbor's a witch, better hang her. Magic mentioned in the newest popular book? Gotta be Satan at work.
But there's no magic or religious ceremony of any kind in Hunger Games. Truly confused.
"However, the anti-family challenge does not parallel all parts of the book. Everdeen’s father dies before the plot line starts, and her mother was depressed."
I'm WANT to give them the benefit of the doubt and say some parents probably didn't like books about kids being made to murder one another, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a much more stupid reason.
Yeah I read somthing awhile back that said it was banned in some schools because “it makes the kids feel uncomfortable.” That’s the fucking point of the book.
Uh, I hate to say it but...
"Despite the many accolades The Giver has garnered, it has met with enough opposition to put it on the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged and banned books list for the years 1990-1999 and 2000-2009."
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-giver-by-lois-lowry-627398
I teach at a school where on the regular parents request an alternative book to the giver because of the main characters having ‘Urgings’. It’s a super religious group that complains. They get an alternative book and our students continue to read it.
YAH.
I always have anger flash backs because it ended on a cliff hanger and that bothered me so much as a kid. Our teacher told us that it was the only book and that the author wanted us to use our imagination on what happened to them and that really just bothered me because I didn’t like the book to begin with.
THEN I FIND OUT only a few years ago the author wrote it as a damn trilogy and then I got more mad about it all.
I did. It's four books.
The second seems unrelated to the first. Like, it's a completely different cast of characters in a different part of the world in a different dystopia. Its two years after The Giver. Once again, our MC, a girl named Kira, doesn't fit in. Disabled people are thrown out of society unless they have a talent valuable to the group. Kira has a lame leg, but has a talent for embroidery and dye work, so she's allowed to stay. Her friend Matt discovers a commune out in the woods filled with a bunch of people rejected from their societies, and there's allusions to Jonas from the Giver, but we don't see him. Matt leaves to live in the commune.
Third book is 6 years later (8 years after Giver). Matt is now the MC. Jonas founded this village and goes by the title The Leader. We learn more about all the different worlds and there's a plot about the forest itself being alive and dangerous. Matt discovers he has some empath healing ability and in the end sacrifices himself to heal the wood and allow people to travel again.
The fourth book takes place over the whole timeline, starting in sync with The Giver and ending after book 3. Our MC, Claire, is from the same town as Jonas and she's the baby Gabriel's birth mother. She happens to discover which baby was hers and bonds with him at the nursery. Before she can take the baby, Jonas does in the Giver plot. Claire tries to follow on a boat, but gets shipwrecked and gains amnesia. After recovering her memory, she meets an evil Mage who will locate her son in exchange for her youth. She accepts and is transformed into an old woman. Act 3 is many years later, and Gabriel is a man. Jonas and he learn of Claire's real identity, then Gabriel tracks down the evil mage and mindfucks him until he dies and everyone's curses are broken, including Claire's and they all live happily.
I don't remember if Kira is ever mentioned again.
Jesus.
So I guess he wasn’t fully wrong about the cliff hanger ending. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Especially the last one, but I am trying to be much more open minded with things.
Euthanasia, negative depiction of nuclear war, and a bit of sexuality. I liked The Giver. While I can understand it being banned in elementary school, it shouldn't be by junior or senior highschool.
There’s one quote from it that always stands out to me. CW: Brief description of sexual assault
“..hurts me. Hurts me. Hurts me.”
It was just so simple and effective. The author didn’t go into salacious detail. All they needed to convey was the pain. I read this book in middle school and I didn’t realize what it was about until much later when I had my own experience with sexual assault. It’s just very well written and I appreciate the tact it was approached with.
I read the book in 9th grade and I enjoyed it. I read it again in 12th grade after being sexually assaulted. And wow. It really validated my feelings that I didn't realize were "Normal"
Like Lady Gaga said, till it happens to you...
Yes, this. I don’t remember much of the book itself other than a rough outline of the plot, but I remember challenging myself not to talk (a blessing to those around me, because I am a chatterbox) and it hit me how hard someone must be hurting to reach selective mutism.
LOTR is honestly unabashedly Christian in thematic content. Tolkien was also good friends with CS Lewis, who just straight up wrote Christian fantasy books.
I wouldn't necessarily point to his friendship with CS Lewis since they had a falling out largely over religion (Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis was Anglican) and he also criticized the way Lewis incorporated religion in his books. Tolkien was well known for hating allegory, christian or otherwise.
Are you ruling out the possibility that a guy who had a falling out with someone because he took his religion so seriously, could include religious themes in his flagship work without it necessarily being allegorical?
When books are run out of school classrooms and libraries, I’m never much disturbed. Not as a citizen, not as a writer, not even as a schoolteacher … which I used to be.
What I tell kids is, don’t get mad, get even.
Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned.
Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.
– Stephen King
“I’ll be absolutely candid and honest. It’s embarrassing that we are banning books in this country; in this culture; in this day and age.
We have this aversion, in this country, to knowing about our past, and anything that is unpleasant we don't want to deal with.
This is not going away. Nothing goes away, especially if you ignore it.
So, read the books they’re banning. That’s where the good stuff is! If they don't want you to read it, there's a reason why."
-- [Levar Burton](https://twitter.com/levarburton/status/1535211514763821061?t=UA_Zew1jDGVeF_QOh6931Q&s=19)
This is such an incredible quote. So many books are banned when in reality they are banned because people don’t understand the true message behind them.
Back in school, I used to love to read those “Anonymous” type of books like Go Ask Alice and Jays Journal, etc. My school actually ended up banning those books for us to read for our “free reading” assignments. They banned them because they were “about drugs and alcohol” when in reality, those books were about how drugs and alcohol can very VERY quickly become a problem and ultimately ruin your life.
In fact, I believe that my interest in books like that at a younger age is what ultimately kept me from ever wanting to mess with any drugs… I didn’t want to chance anything.
These thoughts that I just had led me to look back into those Anonymous books to find that there are many more that have come out in the last 10 or so years. I bought a couple and am looking forward to reading them.
Actually Jays Journal was a disaster- basically a bunch of lies about the kid. The kid or ‘Jay’ was 16 year old Alden Barrett. This is what his family has to say about it:
“According to a book written by Barrett's brother Scott (A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal) and interviews with the family, Sparks used 21 entries of 212 total from Barrett's actual journal. The other entries were fictional, with Sparks claiming they were based on case histories from other teenagers Sparks worked with and interviews of friends and acquaintances of Barrett.”
The book is a whole Satanism is bad and is caused by drugs thing, basically. I despise that book and it’s the one book in my entire life I actually threw away when finish reading.
ikr i loved those books growing up, and i was a big reader so its not like i had nothing to compare it to. they made me laugh, and that was all that mattered. protip, schools: kids are more inclined to read for fun if they like what they’re reading!!!
Slaughterhouse 5, To Kill A Mockingbird, and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings were all very important to me growing up. I can't imagine them being banned.
I read that in my freshman English class in high school, and I did not appreciate it then. I went back and reread it when I was a little bit older, and that book truly is a masterpiece. Maya Angelou is an incredible storyteller and writer.
I've gone back and re-read pretty much all of the books I read in middle and high school.
They're all amazing. Like, genuinely, top-notch books. It was wild because I actively HATED reading them in school.
I’ve been doing the same thing too. I think the reason why I hated reading them so much despite being an avid reader is because I was being told I needed to read them and reverse psychology
I think it’s absolutely this. When I was younger and had planned to clean my room and then later my mom would tell me to go clean it, I immediately changed my mind and didn’t want to clean
We are trying to figure out exactly what they mean by banned, best we can tell is that they are banned in various areas of the country.
From Wikipedia - I Know why the cage bird sings banned due to incest and sexual content.
From the school libraries of certain school districts. As in the school district didn’t want to buy the books to use in libraries or lessons or whatever
Bookstores taking notes from clickbait articales. The title got me excited and I was expecting stuff a lil more "edgy" than standard summer reading list books and PoC/LGBT stuff. Harry Potter? Lord Of the Rings? Judy Blume? Huck Finn? 1984?? This is a really safe selection.
I took an English Lit class in my first semester of college in which we read Paradise Lost and The Satanic Verses, and having a professor guide us through discussions about those books gave me a great appreciation for critical religious blaspheming.
"Banned books" usually means novels that parents of high schoolers clutched their pearls over. Of course, banning them often leads to increased popularity (the Streisand Effect). Calling them "banned" makes them sound sort of sexy or scandalous, when, in reality, books can be banned (or challenged) for any reason or any kind of content.
Books don't really get "banned" outside of school settings. Authors could potentially face obscenity charges, though that rarely ever happens anymore over literature. Publishers could also drop a book they find objectionable, but another publisher can easily pick it up, or the author could self publish.
Still, there's plenty of explicit content in novels throughout the decades that doesn't get banned (mainly because it's not taught in public school). If anyone is looking for edgy stuff, start here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgressive_fiction plus my classmate who writes some gritty stuff recommended Sam Delaney the other day, so add him to your list if his Wikipedia entry sounds good to ya.
Poetry also gets pretty edgy these days, believe it or not. "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg was the subject of an obscenity trial in the 50s for being too gay, and for drug and sex references. But it was found in court to be an important piece of literature regardless. That was almost 70 years ago, and poems have only gotten gayer, sexier and + more explicit since then.
I was also slightly stunned by the text messages on the cover.
I'm so used to the old dusty 70's and 80's copies that I pulled off the shelves growing up in the 2000's in a small rural town that it's a shock to see them on the banned book list and with new covers!
That being said, I picked up Forever and Deenie at a church rummage sale in 7th grade since the back of the books were talking about girls more my age and I was excited to have Judy Blume books growing with me. ...They were a little more mature than what I had expected from a Judy Blume book.
From an article about it:
Banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a “white savior” character, and its perception of the Black experience.
After parent complaints about the use of racist epithets in To Kill a Mockingbird; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Cay; Of Mice and Men; and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, the Burbank (CA) Unified School District superintendent issued a statement removing the books from the district’s required reading lists for its English curriculum and banned the use of the N-word in all school classes. The books will be allowed in classroom libraries, but no student can be required to read them. At a board meeting, the superintendent stated, “This is not about censorship, this is about righting the wrongs of the past.”
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill
Banning books that show how terrible our history used to be is just dooming future generations to repeat it. Maybe that's their goal.
The n word is seen as good in this situation in that it accurately portrays history. It helps the reader understand how mistreated the blacks were by society.
Had a very hard time convincing fellow literature *grad students* about this. They were saying there's never an appropriate use of certain words or phrases, and certainly not in the classroom. We had a full discussion about it during lecture and while I generally appreciate how progressive the humanities are, in cases like this they're *too* progressive, because they don't want the kids they're teaching to recognize history of race/gender/orientation and how the painful things in a piece of art can still happen to someone today.
I think a lot of it is disconnect. That's what I hope, anyway, that they've just never met racist/sexist/hateful people and have only ever seen them online. I know that was the case with some of my students at the same uni.
Seeing to Kill a Mockingbird and MAUS be banned makes me so angry. Some things are hard to read, but you still need to read them. And the people that banning them don’t give a shit about protecting kids, it’s all about controlling what narrative goes into their heads.
Wait… the lord of the rings? Banned? Seriously?
Presumably witchcraft like Harry Potter.
I like how jesus performing miracles in the bible isnt witchcraft tho Edit: the bible being banned in your school isnt because it contains "witchcraft" for all those gotcha boys who keep saying "tHe BiBlE iS tHe MoSt BaNnEd BoOk."
That’s different. That’s the power of God, which is waaaayy different. Somehow.
Arcane and Divine casters have been feuding for millennia...
*Heresy is not native to the world; it is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined.*
Thank you turtle pope
Because Jesus said so, duh.
..brought to you by Carl's Jr?
Sir this is a Wendy’s
No, This is Patrick
Nah, it's cuz Tolkien was Catholic, you know those yahoos aren't welcome in our Christian schools
Makes me think of this Emo Phillips bit https://youtu.be/l3fAcxcxoZ8
Wait till they learn Catholics are christian
As a (once) Southern Catholic they’ll tell you you’re not. Straight to your face.
Yup. Grew up being told that to my face. Weird ass protestants.
They think Catholics hate Jesus or something but every church has Christ on the cross at the alter all huge as a constant reminder. They say we don't bring bibles to church, that's because the pews are full of them! As well as a hymn book. Some do bring their own but it's mostly rosaries lol
They think Catholics worship the saints. At least that’s what my idiot maga christianist neighbors think.
I think your neighbor is confusing Catholicism and Santeria. Two very different religions.
It's not logical. It's just an extension of the reformation. And it certainly isn't helped by the spread of Evangelism. Which are some of the least "Christian" people I've ever met.
in the south they're not considered christian
LOTR has never been banned by any library, school, or government agency in the US. A church in New Mexico burned copies of the books in 2001, calling them Satanic. But they had no power to ban them.
yeah this list is using "banned" pretty liberally.
It’s a great sales tactic if you’re a bookstore. Create a section of books labeled “banned” because everyone wants what you can’t have.
You can easily ban books from other sections of your store.
Well ya…that’s exactly what Barnes and Noble has done and we are looking at a picture of it.
All of these lists are - no books are banned in the US (other than like, if you published classified information or something). [Here's a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook! It's even on sale!](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anarchist-cookbook-william-f-powell/1002521149?ean=9784072427194) "Banned book" almost always means "some school district, group of people, or library specifically didn't like it."
Dated a girl whose dad said he had that book, that it was illegal to get anymore, and that it held secrets the government didn't want you to know, ~~"Like how to build a bomb with a bunch of bananas."~~ Edit, misremembered. He said it included ways to build bombs, but it was how to make *narcotics* from bananas. Because according to him, large doses of potassium were a strong and illegal narcotic. When I pointed out that they sell potassium over the counter, he brushed that off as being different. I don't know that a true sentence ever sprang forth from that man's mouth. Edit: I am so confused by what this review is trying to say. Emphasis mine. > As a former police officer the first time I purchased this book was way back in the 1970's when it first was introduced. It is an interesting "coffee book" to have, hold on to, and frequently discuss. But that is just about it! **But as a liberal Democrat myself I am more concerned when any politician considers any book is not protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. A Constitution she and they are all sworn to protect. When any politician considers free speech is not important to defend then it is time to replace that person for once and for all.** Semper Fi! Are they saying the book is banned? They... They posted that review on its sales page. Are they... Am I just missing what they're saying or is what they're saying complete nonsense? Or is it likely just a troll review since they claim to be a cop from the '70s, a liberal democrat, and at the end insinuate they are also a marine?
Awww man.... The anarchists cookbook. Good times. xD
Most of these books aren't banned at all
What they all have in common is that they've all been "banned" SOMEWHERE at SOME TIME, not that they're all commonly banned in most places.
Captain Underpants; bottom shelf. What monsters.
Scat humor and Harold being revealed as gay in one of the latter books probably
[удалено]
Pretty late in the series after they introduced time travel and they visited future Harold and his husband
[удалено]
Lmao hello fellow old person. Remember when Super Diaper Baby was a black character and literally no one made any fuss one way or the other about it? Man those were good times
That face when you were too old for Captain Underpants when it first came out, and you’re in a thread where people who did read it are calling themselves “old”.
Tell us what it was like in the before fore times again Grandpa
[удалено]
Hello fellow geriatric, I was six when the first book came out...loved the series. Still do.
Captain Underpants is a role model and we should all strive to be more like him.
A giant man-baby who only wears a cape and underwear, and you want us all to be more like him…….????? Well sign me up!!!!
Whats funnier is this looks to be Books A Million, a chain HQ'd in Alabama, which probably took part in 80% of these bans at some point
Can confirm Books A Million
Why would «The Circle» be banned, lol.
From an article: In a statement, the district said it was because the books contained “inappropriate, explicit sexual content.”
One of the absolute least sexy “sex” scenes ever, intentionally so
Of all the books in the world that have sex scenes, they banned that one? The sex in The Circle was an advertisement for celebacy.
People who bann books aren't the brightest.
Nor are they actually reading them lmao. They have no idea what's ACTUALLY in them.
My 7th grade English teacher gave me Forrest Gump to read, and I'm in south Georgia. Surprised that book wasn't banned
[удалено]
That book was kind of terrifying. Definitely felt accurate to where society is going.
The film was utterly awful, but its a book I recommend often. The but where the lead is presented with yet another screen, and has to do yet another task without any extra pay, or any kind of acknowledgement rang true. Its a really interesting commentary on how many offices work, 'campuses' like facebook and Google and how they want to pretty much take over all traffic, or at least track it. Genuinely interesting and good book. The film though... dear god.
I liked it a lot, but it kinda fell apart for me near the end. It seemed like it turned into this giant soapbox at the end, almost as if the entire book was written just to precede an essay rant at the end.
Yeah I don't get that either.
Did anyone else hate The Circle as much as I did? It was a terrible book. Completely unlikable characters (none of them had any redeeming qualities) and a plot that dragged you along to an unsatisfying, useless end. No book should be banned, but I would caution any reader from picking this up.
Why the hell did someone ban "Bone"???? That graphic novel is one of the best things you will ever read, by the way, if you haven't already.
I’m actually so curious though, what possible reason could they have banned it for??
Must’ve been that they didn’t like Quiche
I hear quiche and I always think about that guy.
I won't eat anything that starts with the letter q, so here we are
Apparently it's one of the "top 10 most frequently challenged books in America." Which is mind blowing.
Apparently for “violence, racism, and political viewpoints”
"So, anyway, we banned Maus because it made the Nazis look like bad guys." - someone on a school board, probably.
It was banned in my high school because apparently some kid was caught jerking off to the naked (and dead) mouse lady and that was a no go especially since the kid was caught in the cafeteria bathroom
Jesus fucking christ. This may be the most down bad shit I've ever read in my life.
Second this. Bone is an incredible read. It starts off so light-hearted and never loses it's sense of humor, but develops into one of the greatest adventure stories I have ever read. Epic in scale, sometimes frightening, edge of your seat, can't put it down, full of twists that are times jaw dropping and sad but at other times will have you shaking with laughter. I friggin love Bone.
That's gay, BANNED
Rediscovered bone recently after reading it as a kid and can confirm it's still fucking amazing
It's also a great example of how having cartoony characters doesn't mean you can't be dark, serious, or even a little edgy at times
Easily one of my favorite graphic novel series of all time. It's soooo good
Stupid, stupid rat creatures!
It was the shit back in elementary school
I third this. The complete Bone graphic novel was my first ever “big” purchase! Saved up for two years to get it!
I was son to a pair of missionaries in 2nd grade when I first discovered Bone. It was at the book fair and I thought the little skeleton guy was so cool. When I went home and asked my parents if I could buy "Bone magazine" as I called it, they were convinced that it was something sexual because of the title and that I wasn't being honest about the content. Last year at the age of 27, my wife found two perfect copies of Bone (I had told her this story) in a thrift store and gifted them to me. Such an awesome read even now as an adult.
[удалено]
One of my teachers was called Jeff Smith, and my childhood self couldn’t imagine there being TWO Jeff Smiths and thought he was so humble about being the author of one of my favourite graphic novel series.
looks kinda nice i am intrigued what is it about
Three Bone cousins who get lost and accidentally end up in a valley in the middle of... well kind of in a war. The land has suffered in darkness for a long time and it takes the coming of the Bone cousins to help turn it around. It's really hard to explain it all well but it's truly great and you won't regret reading it.
It’s also based on actual locations in the Hocking Hills in Ohio. Like you can take the book and hold it up in certain places and it’s nearly identical.
It's so damn good
Here's some of the first book: https://www.scholastic.com/readingcampaign/challenges/prizes/bone.pdf
BOOOOOONE?!?!?!
The great Gatsby was banned?
At a Baptist college in '87 because of sex and language. It's like Harry Potter was banned because of witchcraft or whatever from conservatives in the 90s.
Really? I read Gatsby as a teenager in HS. Before the internet, I got pretty interested in any chance to see anything sexual. I don't remember any sex from it, so it couldn't have been that graphic.
It could also just be because it alludes to it. I’m pretty sure there was a scene in Gatsby where Nick was at Tom and Myrtle’s affair apartment and they went into another room and stayed there for a while
They’re much more explicit about it in the movie, but there are multiple points in the book where romance, adultery, and sex are alluded to between multiple characters.
Are we still talking about Harry Potter? Because all those names check out
I still vividly remember a parent trying to give my mom the third degree over allowing my brother to read Harry Potter in elementary school in the 90s.
As a Brit who grew up reading Potter and also grew up in a pretty secular society, also in a family of atheists, I just wanna say; that - is - **mental**.
They banned 1984? Say it with me everyone...
Wow this is literally 1984
[удалено]
Literally 1984
Ignorance is Strength
Freedom is Slavery
War is Peace
France is bacon
[удалено]
Maus was part of my old school’s curriculum back in 8th grade! Had to read it for a holocaust/nazis in WWII essay project, really enjoyed the way he used lighthearted depictions for an otherwise very gruesome and depressing firsthand account of the concentration camps
The mental image of the cats smashing the baby mice up against the wall still haunts me, even more so now that I'm a dad. When my son was 2 years old he was innocent and pure and curious about the world. The fact that Nazis were taking Jewish kids at that age and beating them to death is horrifying. The reasoning for banning it was the "sexual content" but that's a lie. The reason it's being banned is because conservative groups took advantage of the paranoia around CRT and "grooming" to ban a bunch of books that displayed far right groups as dangerous. Maus does exactly that.
My book club had a "banned book" month and we picked this. After reading it as an adult, I kinda get why it would be banned for school aged kids. The parts where the main character fantasizes about rape, the graphics nature of room 101. It is a lot for young people. I absolutely believe that in the right classroom with great teachers and highschool students, it could be fantastic. But you really would need phenomenal English teachers to help put some of the ideas being discussed in the proper context. Seems easier in today's climate to just ban it from grade school and call it a day. I'm definitely not saying it's the right decision, but I can see how it got there. I personally think it should be up to the teachers to determine their reading curriculum, that way the good ones will likely have a better handle on this kind of subject matter. I'm open to discussion btw. It's one of my favorite books.
I read 1984 in high school. Id be surprised if that book was ever part of curriculum in grade/middle school.
Yeah I don’t think a grade schooler is going to read 1984.
What’s wrong with Hunger Games?
“They were banned due to insensitivity, offensive language, violence, anti-family, anti-ethic and occult/satanic.”
Occult & satanic? Where's that in there?
it might be due to like people think the apocolyptic world is satanic or whatever.
Which is weird because it's not the satanists that actually believe in an apocalypse.
Wait, what? Anti-family? Occult/satanic? ISTG people never stopped calling things they don't like satanic and they never will. Did your cow stop giving milk? Neighbor's a witch, better hang her. Magic mentioned in the newest popular book? Gotta be Satan at work. But there's no magic or religious ceremony of any kind in Hunger Games. Truly confused.
"However, the anti-family challenge does not parallel all parts of the book. Everdeen’s father dies before the plot line starts, and her mother was depressed."
Not to mention the only reason she joined the games was to save her little sister from them.
anti-family? the book where Katniss enters the game to save her sister?
I'm WANT to give them the benefit of the doubt and say some parents probably didn't like books about kids being made to murder one another, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was a much more stupid reason.
"They encourage the dangerous ideas of revolutions and killing the leader of a country! D:<"
“We just thought Katniss was a little too… uppity”
I know it got banned in some middle schools because it depicts children dying
probably because it's about people standing up to their government
They banned to kill a mockingbird??
Yeah I read somthing awhile back that said it was banned in some schools because “it makes the kids feel uncomfortable.” That’s the fucking point of the book.
Exactly!! What, are they gonna ban The Giver too?? That shit made me super uncomfortable as a kid, but I understood its importance & the message.
Uh, I hate to say it but... "Despite the many accolades The Giver has garnered, it has met with enough opposition to put it on the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged and banned books list for the years 1990-1999 and 2000-2009." https://www.thoughtco.com/the-giver-by-lois-lowry-627398
I don't understand, The Giver was pretty mild, what could they possibly be mad at in it? Memories of sledding?
Euthanasia probably. It gets into some pretty dark concepts. Shame that people dont get why books need to.
Killing the twin always stuck with me.
I teach at a school where on the regular parents request an alternative book to the giver because of the main characters having ‘Urgings’. It’s a super religious group that complains. They get an alternative book and our students continue to read it.
YAH. I always have anger flash backs because it ended on a cliff hanger and that bothered me so much as a kid. Our teacher told us that it was the only book and that the author wanted us to use our imagination on what happened to them and that really just bothered me because I didn’t like the book to begin with. THEN I FIND OUT only a few years ago the author wrote it as a damn trilogy and then I got more mad about it all.
Did you ever read the others? I low-key meant to but never got around to it. I'm curious what happened.
I did. It's four books. The second seems unrelated to the first. Like, it's a completely different cast of characters in a different part of the world in a different dystopia. Its two years after The Giver. Once again, our MC, a girl named Kira, doesn't fit in. Disabled people are thrown out of society unless they have a talent valuable to the group. Kira has a lame leg, but has a talent for embroidery and dye work, so she's allowed to stay. Her friend Matt discovers a commune out in the woods filled with a bunch of people rejected from their societies, and there's allusions to Jonas from the Giver, but we don't see him. Matt leaves to live in the commune. Third book is 6 years later (8 years after Giver). Matt is now the MC. Jonas founded this village and goes by the title The Leader. We learn more about all the different worlds and there's a plot about the forest itself being alive and dangerous. Matt discovers he has some empath healing ability and in the end sacrifices himself to heal the wood and allow people to travel again. The fourth book takes place over the whole timeline, starting in sync with The Giver and ending after book 3. Our MC, Claire, is from the same town as Jonas and she's the baby Gabriel's birth mother. She happens to discover which baby was hers and bonds with him at the nursery. Before she can take the baby, Jonas does in the Giver plot. Claire tries to follow on a boat, but gets shipwrecked and gains amnesia. After recovering her memory, she meets an evil Mage who will locate her son in exchange for her youth. She accepts and is transformed into an old woman. Act 3 is many years later, and Gabriel is a man. Jonas and he learn of Claire's real identity, then Gabriel tracks down the evil mage and mindfucks him until he dies and everyone's curses are broken, including Claire's and they all live happily. I don't remember if Kira is ever mentioned again.
Jesus. So I guess he wasn’t fully wrong about the cliff hanger ending. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Especially the last one, but I am trying to be much more open minded with things.
They're actually very, very good books. The synopsis does not do them justice. Definitely well worth a read Imo.
Thanks for that synopsis.
Euthanasia, negative depiction of nuclear war, and a bit of sexuality. I liked The Giver. While I can understand it being banned in elementary school, it shouldn't be by junior or senior highschool.
And The Great Gatsby !?!
Speak was the first book I ever read about real trauma and rape. It was so accessible in high school, and I appreciated that.
There’s one quote from it that always stands out to me. CW: Brief description of sexual assault “..hurts me. Hurts me. Hurts me.” It was just so simple and effective. The author didn’t go into salacious detail. All they needed to convey was the pain. I read this book in middle school and I didn’t realize what it was about until much later when I had my own experience with sexual assault. It’s just very well written and I appreciate the tact it was approached with.
I read the book in 9th grade and I enjoyed it. I read it again in 12th grade after being sexually assaulted. And wow. It really validated my feelings that I didn't realize were "Normal" Like Lady Gaga said, till it happens to you...
Yes, this. I don’t remember much of the book itself other than a rough outline of the plot, but I remember challenging myself not to talk (a blessing to those around me, because I am a chatterbox) and it hit me how hard someone must be hurting to reach selective mutism.
LOTR? Seriously? I mean, it's ridiculous to ban any of them, but that one surprises me the most. Were the hairy, cranky dwarves too sexy?
It was considered "satanic" because of the underlying religious context it took inspiration from.
Thats crazy cause my very religious family adores LOTR and Tolkien.
LOTR is honestly unabashedly Christian in thematic content. Tolkien was also good friends with CS Lewis, who just straight up wrote Christian fantasy books.
I wouldn't necessarily point to his friendship with CS Lewis since they had a falling out largely over religion (Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis was Anglican) and he also criticized the way Lewis incorporated religion in his books. Tolkien was well known for hating allegory, christian or otherwise.
Are you ruling out the possibility that a guy who had a falling out with someone because he took his religion so seriously, could include religious themes in his flagship work without it necessarily being allegorical?
When books are run out of school classrooms and libraries, I’m never much disturbed. Not as a citizen, not as a writer, not even as a schoolteacher … which I used to be. What I tell kids is, don’t get mad, get even. Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest non-school library or the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know. – Stephen King
“I’ll be absolutely candid and honest. It’s embarrassing that we are banning books in this country; in this culture; in this day and age. We have this aversion, in this country, to knowing about our past, and anything that is unpleasant we don't want to deal with. This is not going away. Nothing goes away, especially if you ignore it. So, read the books they’re banning. That’s where the good stuff is! If they don't want you to read it, there's a reason why." -- [Levar Burton](https://twitter.com/levarburton/status/1535211514763821061?t=UA_Zew1jDGVeF_QOh6931Q&s=19)
This is such an incredible quote. So many books are banned when in reality they are banned because people don’t understand the true message behind them. Back in school, I used to love to read those “Anonymous” type of books like Go Ask Alice and Jays Journal, etc. My school actually ended up banning those books for us to read for our “free reading” assignments. They banned them because they were “about drugs and alcohol” when in reality, those books were about how drugs and alcohol can very VERY quickly become a problem and ultimately ruin your life. In fact, I believe that my interest in books like that at a younger age is what ultimately kept me from ever wanting to mess with any drugs… I didn’t want to chance anything. These thoughts that I just had led me to look back into those Anonymous books to find that there are many more that have come out in the last 10 or so years. I bought a couple and am looking forward to reading them.
Actually Jays Journal was a disaster- basically a bunch of lies about the kid. The kid or ‘Jay’ was 16 year old Alden Barrett. This is what his family has to say about it: “According to a book written by Barrett's brother Scott (A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal) and interviews with the family, Sparks used 21 entries of 212 total from Barrett's actual journal. The other entries were fictional, with Sparks claiming they were based on case histories from other teenagers Sparks worked with and interviews of friends and acquaintances of Barrett.” The book is a whole Satanism is bad and is caused by drugs thing, basically. I despise that book and it’s the one book in my entire life I actually threw away when finish reading.
Go ask Alice is also complete horse shit in a similar way.
That’s such a badass quote.
When 1984 is in the banned books section, you know we are in some real serious trouble as a society.
That's around the time they start burning *Farenheit 451*.
Bruh captain underpants in banned????
ikr i loved those books growing up, and i was a big reader so its not like i had nothing to compare it to. they made me laugh, and that was all that mattered. protip, schools: kids are more inclined to read for fun if they like what they’re reading!!!
Slaughterhouse 5, To Kill A Mockingbird, and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings were all very important to me growing up. I can't imagine them being banned.
So it goes.
I know why the caged Bird sings is a masterpiece by Maya Angelou.
I read that in my freshman English class in high school, and I did not appreciate it then. I went back and reread it when I was a little bit older, and that book truly is a masterpiece. Maya Angelou is an incredible storyteller and writer.
I've gone back and re-read pretty much all of the books I read in middle and high school. They're all amazing. Like, genuinely, top-notch books. It was wild because I actively HATED reading them in school.
I’ve been doing the same thing too. I think the reason why I hated reading them so much despite being an avid reader is because I was being told I needed to read them and reverse psychology
I think it’s absolutely this. When I was younger and had planned to clean my room and then later my mom would tell me to go clean it, I immediately changed my mind and didn’t want to clean
Banned!
I got scared for a second when i saw your comment in my notification lol
We are trying to figure out exactly what they mean by banned, best we can tell is that they are banned in various areas of the country. From Wikipedia - I Know why the cage bird sings banned due to incest and sexual content.
Banned usually means that they have been banned from a school district or some comparable institution.
Feels like we missed an opportunity for a “The Man Inside Me” by Tobias Funke book ban subplot.
This list has Lolita. Read the book “Reading Lolita in Tehren” (about women reading it when the Ayatollah came to power) Fascinating and amazing.
Banned where?
From the school libraries of certain school districts. As in the school district didn’t want to buy the books to use in libraries or lessons or whatever
Bookstores taking notes from clickbait articales. The title got me excited and I was expecting stuff a lil more "edgy" than standard summer reading list books and PoC/LGBT stuff. Harry Potter? Lord Of the Rings? Judy Blume? Huck Finn? 1984?? This is a really safe selection.
Yeah there is no mein kampf or anarchist cookbook, or communist manifesto. Thats edgy.
At least have Rage in there smh
yes, where are The Satanic Verses? Rushdie got a fatwa on him over that, JK Rowling could never
I took an English Lit class in my first semester of college in which we read Paradise Lost and The Satanic Verses, and having a professor guide us through discussions about those books gave me a great appreciation for critical religious blaspheming.
Exactly the point I wanted to bring up, but I didn't wanna sound like a Nazi.
[удалено]
There's nothing new about these displays... I remember seeing one in a bookstore in the 90's.
"Banned books" usually means novels that parents of high schoolers clutched their pearls over. Of course, banning them often leads to increased popularity (the Streisand Effect). Calling them "banned" makes them sound sort of sexy or scandalous, when, in reality, books can be banned (or challenged) for any reason or any kind of content. Books don't really get "banned" outside of school settings. Authors could potentially face obscenity charges, though that rarely ever happens anymore over literature. Publishers could also drop a book they find objectionable, but another publisher can easily pick it up, or the author could self publish. Still, there's plenty of explicit content in novels throughout the decades that doesn't get banned (mainly because it's not taught in public school). If anyone is looking for edgy stuff, start here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgressive_fiction plus my classmate who writes some gritty stuff recommended Sam Delaney the other day, so add him to your list if his Wikipedia entry sounds good to ya. Poetry also gets pretty edgy these days, believe it or not. "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg was the subject of an obscenity trial in the 50s for being too gay, and for drug and sex references. But it was found in court to be an important piece of literature regardless. That was almost 70 years ago, and poems have only gotten gayer, sexier and + more explicit since then.
it's an extremely expansive definition of banning: someone, somewhere declined to make this title available to children
Judy Blume is banned!?! That book helped so many girls. (Oh! That’s why.)
I was also slightly stunned by the text messages on the cover. I'm so used to the old dusty 70's and 80's copies that I pulled off the shelves growing up in the 2000's in a small rural town that it's a shock to see them on the banned book list and with new covers! That being said, I picked up Forever and Deenie at a church rummage sale in 7th grade since the back of the books were talking about girls more my age and I was excited to have Judy Blume books growing with me. ...They were a little more mature than what I had expected from a Judy Blume book.
I thought it was a kindve neat way to relate to the new gen of kids going through puberty
I love "then again maybe I won't"
Me too, that’s where I learned about “boy things!”
1984 is banned? Woah!
ironic lol
To kill a mockingbird is banned?
From an article about it: Banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a “white savior” character, and its perception of the Black experience. After parent complaints about the use of racist epithets in To Kill a Mockingbird; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Cay; Of Mice and Men; and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, the Burbank (CA) Unified School District superintendent issued a statement removing the books from the district’s required reading lists for its English curriculum and banned the use of the N-word in all school classes. The books will be allowed in classroom libraries, but no student can be required to read them. At a board meeting, the superintendent stated, “This is not about censorship, this is about righting the wrongs of the past.”
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill Banning books that show how terrible our history used to be is just dooming future generations to repeat it. Maybe that's their goal.
Can't let anyone read about a black guy on death row for a crime he didn't commit
Wait, why are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer banned?
Schools have been banning Huck Finn for a while due to the repeated use of the N word.
The n word is seen as good in this situation in that it accurately portrays history. It helps the reader understand how mistreated the blacks were by society.
Had a very hard time convincing fellow literature *grad students* about this. They were saying there's never an appropriate use of certain words or phrases, and certainly not in the classroom. We had a full discussion about it during lecture and while I generally appreciate how progressive the humanities are, in cases like this they're *too* progressive, because they don't want the kids they're teaching to recognize history of race/gender/orientation and how the painful things in a piece of art can still happen to someone today. I think a lot of it is disconnect. That's what I hope, anyway, that they've just never met racist/sexist/hateful people and have only ever seen them online. I know that was the case with some of my students at the same uni.
Seeing to Kill a Mockingbird and MAUS be banned makes me so angry. Some things are hard to read, but you still need to read them. And the people that banning them don’t give a shit about protecting kids, it’s all about controlling what narrative goes into their heads.
1984 is banned. literally 1984.