Posts tagged with censorship
On the scale of dumb...
Truly, nothing could be as dumb as claiming the children's book Arthur's Birthday "damages [children's] souls", but this comes close: apparently, some library in Indiana has decided to move Indianapolis author John Green's best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars from...
Not their finest hour
According to the Tennessean, students at the St. Edward Catholic School in Nashville will no longer be allowed to read the Harry Potter series, as a pastor at the parish school says he "consulted several exorcists" and decided the books were dangerous. He explained further...
Time to match some funds
There has been another twist in the saga of this particular copy of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, which belonged to the judge who presided over the book's 1960 obscenity trial: while the book was sold at auction last fall for £56,250, the UK government has blocked its release...
Not a Good Look
According to The Guardian, Catholic priests in Poland were photographed holding a book-burning ceremony of titles that "promote sorcery", including J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. Two things: A) if the Harry Potter books successfully promoted sorcery, we'd have lost an entire generation to Hogwarts by now, and...
It looks so innocuous
Okay, this is for serious book nerds only: Sotheby’s is auctioning off the exact copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that belonged to the judge presiding over the book's 1960 obscenity trial, which eventually lead to the reworking of England's...
Creepy
The Smithsonian magazine recently posted an interesting article about the history of book-burnings, and the motivations of the arsonists in question. That first picture (of a bunch of grinning Hitler Youth members, looking for all the world like cheery Eagle Scouts) is...
Absolutely ridiculous
We might have been consistently underwhelmed by V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic series, but nobody deserves this kind of nonsense: according to the...
Okay, WOW.
74-year-old Argentinian artist Marta Minujín has built a spectacular replica of the Greek Parthenon using copies of banned books. "The Parthenon of Books" in Kassel, Germany is the centerpiece of the Documenta 14 art festival. With the help of students from Kassel University, Minujín...
Ugh times a million
I've been struggling to choose what makes me the angriest about Simon & Schuster's decision to pay Milo Yiannopoulos (editor of Breitbart Tech, alt-right pundit, and all-around racist asshole) what Yiannopoulos described as "a wheelbarrow full of money" for his upcoming book, Dangerous, and I think I've finally figured it out: it's Simon & Schuster's...
Getting creative
Quartz recently published a fascinating article about Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose book, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, has been unable to find a Chinese-language publisher...
Beach reads
In honor of Banned Books Week, Forbes put together a list of the "Top 5 Ancient And Medieval Censored Books To Read During Banned Book Week". I have no idea how they determine what makes these books the "Top 5"...
Best of luck, guys.
The Intercept recently posted a fascinating article about the difficulties surrounding children's book publishing in Russia. If the article's information is accurate, Russian publishers are working in a minefield: there is a 2010 law that details the government's MANY thoughts on how best to...
My eyes, they roll
Today in embarrassing book-banning news, a school board member in Marshfield, Wisconsin is trying to ban a Muppets book on the grounds that it contains images of suffering and poverty that are "too graphic" for a kindergarten audience...
Dumb, New Zealand. Seriously.
As far as I can tell, New Zealand is still maintaining a nation-wide ban on Ted Dawe's YA novel Into the River, despite the fact that the whole thing makes them look incredibly toolish...
Have they read it?
Well, this is just... unfortunate. In an effort to purge Russia of swastikas in observance of Victory Day, the holiday commemorating the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany, Moscow bookstores have removed all copies of Maus, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1980 graphic novel about the Holocaust...
Jail time for assigning Beloved?
Oh, this is great news: not content with good old-fashioned censorship, the Kansas Senate has passed a bill "making it easier to prosecute teachers and school administrators for distributing materials deemed harmful to minors". Apparently, supporters say the bill is necessary to ensure that kids are protected from teachers distributing pornography at school. Because... that's a thing that happens a lot? Or something?
Complicated
There's an interesting censorship case facing the British Royal Courts of Justice: according to the Guardian, a "well-known performer" has been prevented from publishing a memoir because his ex-wife fears that the information featured in the book will cause harm to their child...
The phrase "training guide" does sound a little ominous, though.
In a move that has generated a lot of online commentary, Chicago Public Schools (the nation’s third largest school district) announced last week that they would be restricting students' access to Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s 2003 graphic novel about growing up in Iran. We're obviously no fans of book-banning...
A misguided publicity stunt?
Don't get me wrong, I think the Fifty Shades novels are terrible, terrible books, but the news that a charity for female abuse victims is planning to use the series as toilet paper and mulch for their compost heap is straight-up disturbing. (Not least because that would be really uncomfortable toilet paper.) I'm even more freaked out by the idea of burning the books, which was the charity's first suggestion...
My feelings on censorship have gone to war with my feelings on common sense.
Oh, man...A mother of an 11-year-old girl in New Hampshire has asked that Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games be removed from the school's curriculum because of its violent subject matter. The wom...
At least Harry Potter didn't make the list...
In honor of Banned Books Week, here's the list of last year's top-ten most frequently challenged books (according to the American Library Association):1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren M...
Dark times
There was an interesting article in the Seattle Times (via the Tri-City Herald) a few days ago about a potential censorship case in the Richland School District. A 10th grade Honors language-arts...
Hot-button topic
The most recent Horn Book newsletter has a great interview up with Joanna Cole, one of the co-creators (with illustrator Bruce Degen) of the Magic School Bus series. Cole and Degen's most recent ...
Rowling shocks the easily shockable (and thrills legions of fanfic writers)
...by announcing over the weekend that beloved wizarding icon Dumbledore was gay!GO, J.K. ROWLING! Hell, if your books are going to be banned left and right anyway, why not strike a blow for equa...
It's that time of year again
Welcome to Banned Books Week!Looking for a banned book to read? Lucky for you, there's no reason to leave the house: half the childhood classics on your bookshelf have been banned or challenged ...
Support your favorite banned book.
My local bookstore is selling the American Library Association's "Banned Books" bracelets. There's an adult version featuring Howl, Alice in Wonderland, The Color Purple, and three other titles f...
Borders Books draws a (totally bizarre) line in the sand.
I've only been half-aware of the flap surrounding Aury Wallington's new YA novel Pop, but I thought I'd pass along my tiny store of knowledge so that you too, gentle readers, can be In The Know (o...
Nutjobs on parade
The Washington Post is reporting that a mother of four in Gwinnett County, Georgia, is seeking to have the Harry Potter books banned from the county's school libraries, claiming that the books pr...
Happy birthday, Margaret Wise Brown!
And thank you for Goodnight Moon.Apparently, the New York Public Library banned Goodnight Moon when it first came out, which just goes to show you that even super awesome librarians who work in su...
Keeping our bookshelves safe...
...from the horrors of gay penguin love. Thank you, fine parents in Savannah, MO! Way to keep your eyes on the important stuff! From the AP Wire:"Parents Complain About Book's UndertonesMarch 0...