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UnknownSubject
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Australia
212 Posts |
 Posted - 10/05/2005 : 12:19:24 AM
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Okay, I've read
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine (some of them, anyway)
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
19. Sex by Madonna (looked at the pictures mainly!)
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
plus some of the other Judy Blume books that I really can't remember.
It's an interesting list (the full one, not mine).
Terrahawk - if you look at the footnote on the chart, it indicates that more challenges occur than are actually recorded, so there is potentially a greater effect occurring that realised through the data.
I agree that people have the right to object to reading the material, or have it placed in special sections, but not to have it stripped from shelves. Unfortunately, this information (in terms of "most challenged" books) doesn't really go into what happens to the books that get challenged, so it is a bit hard to assess the effect on these titles that being on this list has created.
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 06:19:01 AM
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Depends on the book; I haven't read it so I can't attest as to it's quality, subject matter, or reading level. If it's well-written on a level a first-grader could read, I probably wouldn't have any problems with it.
Which is the point I'm making. Even if it would be as you describe (quality, etc.), I doubt if I would want the book in my child's class. Now, would that make me a book burner? No, I don't see how it would. It's a simple matter of people disagreeing over what should be taught in school.
Depends, are you requesting that your child be given an alternate book or that the book be removed from the entire curriculum because you believe that it conflicts with a particular viewpoint?
I agree with you that the former is no problem given the conditions you apply. Like I said, that's what they did when I went to school. The latter though, isn't an open and shut case. I believe there are instances where some books are just inappropriate for school use. In general, I agree, but I can't give it a blanket approval.
There has to be some limits on such a thing though, eventually these students are going to wind up in college.
But in college you can skip around a lot of what you don't like via course selection.
My issue is not whether they think something is appropriate, it's whether or not that they've actually read the work in question before making the decision as to whether or not it's appropriate. Judging by some of these entries, I don't think that many people have, especially the classics.
I can't comment on that because the statistics don't mention anything about that. I'm sure that's the case in some instances though. You have to remember though, there is a kook in every town.
I see quite a few names on the list that I can't imagine would be books that would appear in many libraries, which just screams "letter writing campaign" in the same fashion that the FCC recieved thousands upon thousands of complaints about this show or other from a handful of people.
Remember, these are just individual instances. So it doesn't necessarily mean a group is trying to get a specific book banned from all libraries. It could mean the small county library had someone complain about having Madonna's book.
Terrahawk - if you look at the footnote on the chart, it indicates that more challenges occur than are actually recorded, so there is potentially a greater effect occurring that realised through the data.
True, but even if you multiply it by a factor of five, it is still fairly small considering the number of schools, school libraries, public libraries, and other book venues across the country. Also, I've never cared for the "there are more instances of this going on, than recorded" type of footnote. Either you have the actual statistic or you have extrapolated in a reasonable way to get the higher figure. I will give them credit for not guesstimating.
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 06:39:24 AM
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I'm actually more concerned about the fact that they have started banning Piglet (pig images in general) in England because it offends Muslims.
The ROPe gives you three options, convert, submit, or die. There is a fourth, resist. |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 08:31:20 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by UnknownSubject
Terrahawk - if you look at the footnote on the chart, it indicates that more challenges occur than are actually recorded, so there is potentially a greater effect occurring that realised through the data.
It says the chart counts between 25-20% of all challenges. Assuming it's 20%, that's 372 / 4 x 5 = 465 challenges against public libraries per year. Since roughly 373 Americans are killed or injured by lightning every year, we can see that every time four Americans are hit by lightning, five issue book challenges.
Sorry, but no matter how you spin it, I'm not impressed with those numbers. You could probably get more people signing a petition to ban oxygen.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 09:26:26 AM
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"Sorry, but no matter how you spin it, I'm not impressed with those numbers. You could probably get more people signing a petition to ban oxygen."
Have you seen the episode of Penn & Teller's Bullcrap where they circulate a petition against water (under it's chemical name) and we get to watch a bunch of hippies merrily signing off on it? It's a hoot.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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Paul LoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 10:19:43 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Ken HPoJ
Have you seen the episode of Penn & Teller's Bullcrap where they circulate a petition against water (under it's chemical name) and we get to watch a bunch of hippies merrily signing off on it? It's a hoot.
There's a web site devoted to the "controversy": [url="http://www.dhmo.org/"]dhmo.org[/url]
(They even have a cute little banner ad for a putative manufacturer of glass lab supplies, Acme Klien Bottles, whose motto is "Where Yesterday's Future is Here Today!")
"...You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged." |
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KurtVon
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
387 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 12:55:02 PM
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Hmm, maybe I should file my problems with Rainbow Fish and see if I can get that on the list (for those who haven't read it, the main moral of the story seems to be "if you want friends, buy them"). My daughter has just started bringing home books she picked from the library herself, and each Friday I worry she's going to be grabbing something inappropriate (since she basically picks them for their cover art) so I can pretty much understand how these end up on the list. Still, I doubt I'd demand it was pulled from the shelves, I'd just find something more appropriate to substitute (and if she objects, maybe it will encourage her to start reading herself).
And yeah, that epsiode of B.S. was funny. My favorite though was the one on yoga. My wife loves yoga (she's lost about 30 lbs doing it) but tends to roll her eyes when the instructor goes on about centering your ki. When they showed a sequence of yoga instructors spouting spiritual mumbo jumbo with Penn periodically interjecting the comment "it's stretching" she was rolling on the floor.
There are a few episodes that come across as a bit mean-spirited, though.
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Dirk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
237 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2005 : 1:52:51 PM
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1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
I read these in 4th grade because they were in my classroom’s library. Some of the illustrations were disturbing (in the “everything looks like it’s melting” kind of way) but other than that I don’t see why this one is #1.
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I hate this book, down to the very core of my being, and I hate Mark Twain almost as much. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to read it 6 times during high school and college. In a class on Realism and Naturalism I was taking, the professor asked how many people had already read "Huck". Every single person in the class raised his hand... and the professor assigned it anyway, only to cover the same ground gone over every single time this book is read... let’s talk about the N-word, Jim is nice, people are bad, Twain uses dialect really well... No new information is ever gleaned from it.
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Maybe people object to this book because it isn’t very good. Vonnegut is the last century’s answer to Mark Twain – a white-haired old nut who obviously thinks he’s the wittiest person on God’s green earth. As Dr. Evil once said, there's nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster.
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
I can see why this one is on here. Some scenes (the “hero” and his friends masturbating in a movie theatre - the “hero” smothering a girl, sawing her head off and shoving the body in a furnace – the “hero” bashing his girlfriend’s head in with a brick and dumping her down a shaft…) were censored for years and have only recently been re-inserted in their entirety. Richard Wright was probably the penultimate “angry black man”, and he framed the whole book as a case of naturalism (it wasn’t the hero’s fault – it was society’s fault) and racial injustice… plus the last third of the book is a Communist diatribe (it’s capitalism’s fault, too), and the critical introduction to the book reveals that Wright was initially (before their atrocities were revealed) a Nazi sympathizer. Definitely not for high school.
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
It’s ridiculous that that Twain section at my local Borders takes up more room than Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Austen. I’ve “Huck” and “Tom” alone assigned more times than anything by any of the aforementioned authors.
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
I loved this book as a little kid and fortunately I’ve saved our battered copy of it, because this book as gone the way of Lawn Jarts… but at least I can grab a copy of “The New Joy of Gay Sex”.
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Marlowe
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
445 Posts |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2005 : 08:34:06 AM
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Haven't seen "Bullcrap" yet. I'm hopinh to get a chance some time before 2007.
Well, regardless of the "Impending Censorship Crisis" theme, it's still interesting to see what a handful of people want banned.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
I met Peck once, but haven't read his book. I feel bad now.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The first book (Clan of the Cave Bear) is actually very good, especially to a guy like me who loves museums. It's an archaeology geek-out of the first order. Kreb, the crippled shaman, is based on an actual fossil find in a Neanderthal site -- which, I think, is a first.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A classic, I think; very intense and thoughtful.
Carrie by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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