Fighting Censorship: Off With Their Clothes!

A group of French booksellers and publishers have gotten together to protest censorship in an entirely new and different way.

When Tous à Poil, (Everyone Naked), was attacked by a politician, these publishing professionals took their best shot in a campaign entitled “everyone naked against censorship.” Wearing nothing but carefully placed books the group said they were naked to show their “support for authors and books which have been unjustly attacked.” From The Guardian:

After a French children's book which set out to remove stigma around nudity by featuring drawings of everyday people getting undressed drew the ire of France’s UMP party, a group of publishers and booksellers decided to register their displeasure -- by posing naked.

Jean-François Copé appeared on television earlier this month to denounce Tous à Poil, a children's picture book in which characters including a policeman and a school teacher are shown getting undressed, and naked, before plunging into the sea. The authors, Claire Franek and Marc Daniau, wrote it to take the shame out of being naked. "If you think about it, whether you're a baby, a doctor or a baker … we all have buttocks, a tummy button, genitals and even moles," they have said. "With this book, we therefore decided to take an uninhibited look at nudity."

Predictably -- even for France -- the book didn’t sit well with everyone. Copé, who is the head of France’s Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party, said that he was outraged when he saw the book:

"My heart missed a beat," he said in an interview. "A naked teacher … isn't that great for teachers' authority! We don't know whether or not to smile, but as it is for our children, we don't feel like smiling. A naked baby, a naked babysitter, naked neighbours, a naked granny, a naked dog …" he went on.

His comments backfired, sending the book racing to the top of bestseller lists in France, according to Le Monde, and drawing widespread condemnation, with minister for education Vincent Peillon calling Copé a "spokesperson for extremist groups", the French press reported.

Arundhatti Roy Criticizes Penguin for Withdrawing Controversial Book

Booker prize-winning author, Arundhatti Roy, is pointing the finger at her own publisher, Penguin, for agreeing to withdraw a book they published which has offended Hindu “fanatics.” From The Telegraph:

The writer, who won the Booker Prize for her 1996 novel The God of Small Things and has since become India’s leading radical non-fiction writer, hinted she may drop Penguin over its decision.

The withdrawal of American academic Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus, An Alternative History on Monday to settle a legal battle with a fundamentalists who claimed it demeaned their gods and humiliated their devotees, caused dismay among India’s intelligentsia. 

Ms Doniger is a highly respected Indologist at the University of Chicago and her book, which describes Hinduism as a pluralist, liberal and compassionate faith angered Hindu fundamentalists who said was written with Christian missionary zeal and over-sexualised Hindu gods.

The group which took legal action cited its cover, which featured an image of Lord Krishna sitting on the buttocks of naked women, and claimed the book contained many inaccuracies.

See more at The Telegraph here and here.

National Book Award-Winning Invisible Man Banned for “Lack of Literary Value”

There can be a great deal of power in a single voice. But is that always a good thing? The end result of a single parent’s complaint make us wonder. Here’s what happened: The parent of a grade 11 student in Randolph County, North Carolina wrote a detailed grievance to the school district about Ralph Ellison’s National Book Award-Winning novel, The Invisible Man.  In part, the grievance said:

The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing his individual experiences and his feelings about the events portrayed in his life. This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers. You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.

According to The Huffington Post:

As the school district's policy requires, the parent's complaints lead to votes on the school and district levels. Both held that the book should remain available to students in the library. However, in a 5-2 vote, the school board voted to ban the book, with one board member, Gary Mason, stating, "I didn’t find any literary value."

Mason's blunt assessment however, runs counter to decades of intellectual criticism of the novel, which won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction, beating out Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
In 1995, writing for the New York Times, Roger Rosenblatt praised the novel as a masterpiece.

"Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," which won the National Book Award in 1953, was instantly recognized as a masterpiece, a novel that captured the grim realities of racial discrimination as no book had, " Rosenblatt wrote. "Its reputation grew as Ellison retreated into a mythic literary silence that made his one achievement definitive."
Including the book in its list of 100 Best English Language Novels since 1923, Time literary critic Lev Grossman also expressed great admiration for Ellison's work.

And now students perusing their school libraries in Randolph County, North Carolina won’t have access to the book. How can that be seen as anything but sad?

Go Read A Banned Book!

With Freedom to Read week well underway, people all across Canada are being reminded that, even in an entirely free country, the right to enjoy the literature of one’s choosing should never be taken for granted.

Now in its 29th year, in 2013 Freedom to Read Week runs from February 24th to March 2nd and is highlighted by events across the country. A well-designed web site holds focus for this celebration of books and reading meant to encourage “Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Interestingly, one page on the site highlights historical banning and burnings, including Ovid’s banishment from Rome in A.D., King James I of England’s censorship of Sir Walter Raleigh’s book The History of the World for “being too saucy in censuring princes,” and, in 1859, George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede was attacked as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind,” while in 1929, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was banned in the Soviet Union because of “occultism.”

An extensive list of contemporary challenged books and magazines is just as shocking and includes Timothy Findley’s classic The Wars; Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials; Jon Stewart’s Earth: The Book; Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and all seven books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

The Freedom to Read Week web site provides an extensive toolkit for those wanting to know more about the event or somehow get involved.

The Best Headline in the World

When Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s beloved book Beloved was challenged in Michigan last week, The New York Daily News responded with what has to be one of the top newspaper headlines of all time. Ready?

Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' is simplistic pornography, say two Michigan parents who don't appear to be very smart

That’s the headline. The piece itself doesn’t pull any punches, either:

Okay, if you compare "James and the Giant Peach" to "Beloved," then you are a moron and your opinion on anything doesn't count for anything ever again - not only on literature, but whether pepperoni belongs on Friday night's pizza. Also, regarding all the sex and violence and violent sex in a book about slavery whose author happened to win the highest literary prize in the world: watch "Roots," sister.

As it turns out, the stylish NYDN piece is the good news. The bad news? Beloved, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1983, has already been pulled from some Michigan classrooms.

A Banned Books Reading List

Want a good starting point? According to the Banned Books Week web site, “More than 11,000 books have been challenged since 1982.” That’s an awful big list. But the 10 most challenged titles of 2010 provide the basis for an awesome reading list for you and the children in your life. Happy reading!

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, religious viewpoint, sex education, sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Lush, by Natasha Friend
Reasons: drugs, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint

Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit

Twilight (series), by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence, unsuited to age group

Read a Banned Book Now!

One of the things I love most about Banned Books Week is it gives us an opportunity to think about -- and hopefully to read -- a banned book. It’s a wonderful chance to make lemonade. After all, a lot of thought and energy goes in to having books removed from libraries and schools. I can’t think of a better way to reward those efforts than by giving the books that have been banned extra attention and making sure they’re read and even purchased.

As the map (below right) shows, censorship isn’t a regional issue. It can rear its ugly head wherever there are books… and quite often when there are children who apparently need to be protected from nasty literature. (Books kill!)

So who is doing the complaining and just what are they complaining about? The ALA web site offers up some background. From 2001 to 2010 American libraries were faced with 4,660 challenges:

1,536 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material;
1,231 challenges due to “offensive language”;
977 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”;
553 challenges due to “violence”
370 challenges due to “homosexuality”; and

Further, 121 materials were challenged because they were “anti-family,” and an additional 304 were challenged because of their “religious viewpoints.”

1,720 of these challenges (approximately 37%) were in classrooms; 30% (or1,432) were in school libraries; 24% (or 1,119) took place in public libraries. There were 32 challenges to college classes; and 106 to academic libraries. There are isolated cases of challenges to materials made available in or by prisons, special libraries, community groups, and student groups. The majority of challenges were initiated by parents (almost exactly 48%), while patrons and administrators followed behind (10% each).

And just in case you want to take things a step further, Word & Film offers up The 5 Best Banned Books Turned Films. Wonderful! Fighting censorship with all our senses!

Want to get excited about books banned in Canada? You’ve got a bit of time. Canada’s Freedom to Read week takes place February 26 to March 3, 2012. Start planning your events now.

Rohinton Mistry Book Banning Causes International Furor

The banning by the University of Mumbai of Rohinton Mistry's Booker-nominated 1991 debut novel, Such a Long Journey, has drawn international attention, as well as outrage from writers organizations in the Canadian author’s country. The Writers’ Union of Canada and PEN Canada have called on the University of Mumbai to reverse its decison. From CBC:

A university vice-chancellor in Mumbai pulled the book from a second-year bachelor of arts reading list last month because of complaints from students who support right-wing political party Shiv Sena.

Mistry's novel follows the story of a family struggling to get by in 1970s India, and there are descriptions of Shiv Sena's violent tactics.

PEN Canada said it was “deeply concerned” at reports of book-burning and censorship at the University of Mumbai.

But as Nina Martyris points out in The Guardian, some good is likely to come from all the attention:

If there is a redeeming feature to this sorry episode, it is the quality of protest it has provoked. Redeeming because the Shiv Sena, which has a reputation for violence, is rarely countered. An online petition is being circulated, book readings held and bookstores deluged with orders for the novel. In a written statement, Dr Frazer Mascarenhas, the Jesuit principal of St Xavier's College which Mistry attended and where Aditya Thackeray is currently enrolled, asked the all-important question: "Is it not unreasonable, that literature is banned merely because it dares to critique us?"

Mistry sent in his response from his home in Canada. In an eloquent and erudite statement that was carried on the front pages of India's leading newspapers, Mistry recalled Rabindranath Tagore's rousing poem about freedom. In stinging but measured prose, he admonished the vice-chancellor for being "silent on the matter of moral responsibility". He did not name the vice-chancellor, addressing instead the high office of the chair and the "abuse" of its powers. For the young Thackeray, he had some haunting Conradian wisdom: step back from the abyss, or go over the edge.

The response from Mistry that Martyris mentions is included in a press release from the author’s Canadian publisher here. January Magazine’s 2003 interview with Mistry is here.

Get Ready for Banned Books Week

Regular readers of January Magazine know that we love Banned Books Week around here. It’s well known that there’s nothing like a good banning to boost interest in a book and, quite often, sales. During Banned Book Week, though, the whole thing gets more intense. From the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week page:

Intellectual freedom -- the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular -- provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

Banned Books Week runs from September 25th through October 2nd. Read how you can get involved here and here. And, while you’re at it, don’t forget to read a banned book!

Boy Bum Gets Book Banned

You don’t often hear cries of “censorship!” in Canada, but when you do, it can get pretty silly.

The most recent example is a good one. Annabel Lyon’s debut novel, The Golden Mean (Vintage Canada), is a fictionalized account of Aristotle’s teaching relationship with Alexander the Great. Since the book was published in Canada in the fall of 2009, it has been treated as a work of some literary merit. It won the 2009 Rogers Writers' Trust first prize, and was a finalist for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award. In Canada, that’s pretty much the literary trifecta: the best there is.

The book -- Lyon’s debut -- has been heaped with praise. Russell Banks’ blurb now seems especially ironic. Banks said the book was “more than a brilliant and beautifully told novel: it’s also a profound exploration of moral and philosophical issues that have troubled and perplexed us since Aristotle.”

The moral and philosophical issues dealt with in the book were not the cause of a recent ban of The Golden Mean by BC Ferries. The marine transportation company have opted not to sell the book on their boats due to the graphic nature of the cover: a beautiful boy astride a beautiful horse, the image is certainly more reminiscent of classic art than pornography, and entirely in keeping with the content of the book.

Writing on The New Yorker’s blog, Eileen Reynolds sums the whole thing up neatly here:

Censorship, to our way of thinking, is generally bad news. Is there ever a good reason to ban a book? Maybe not, but the cause for a recent Canadian ban on Annabel Lyon’s “The Golden Mean” strikes us as particularly silly. BC Ferries, a maritime transportation service in British Columbia, has removed Lyon’s novel from its bookshops—not because the author penned a controversial scene or racy bit of dialogue, but because the paperback’s cover art features a naked man’s rear-end!

Meanwhile, The Vancouver Sun talked to BC Ferries about the banning:

BC Ferries has a habit of banning books that feature nudity of any kind. Stephen Vogler's Only in Whistler was banned in 2009 because it featured a historical photo of four naked female skiers viewed from the rear. Two years ago, Wreck Beach, a history of Vancouver's nude beach, was banned for similar reasons.

BC Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall told The Vancouver Sun the books for the ferry bookstore are chosen by committee. "We choose to select non-controversial books in our gift shop. We have a wide audience so we want to keep it family appropriate. This book has a naked boy on the cover."

The image, of a young man draped across a horse, shows bare buttocks.

"We offered with the publisher to put a belly band over the cover," said Marshall, "but they declined."

Marshall conceded that the bookstore carries a wide range of magazines, such as Men's Health, that often feature partial nudity on their covers.

I’ve not heard anything in defense of the ban, but stories condemning it have appeared internationally. That should prove to be great news for Lyon: The Golden Mean is a terrific book and it seems likely that this will help her sell even more copies. And, in many ways, the timing just couldn’t be better. The US edition -- sans boy bum -- will be published September 7th. Too bad they don’t still have time to change the cover.

Rushdie to Write About Fatwa

More than 20 years after the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered him killed, knighted author Salman Rushdie has said he’s finally going to talk about the experience in a book. From The Guardian:

Salman Rushdie is planning to write a book about the decade he spent in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him.

"It's my story, and at some point, it does need to be told. That point is getting closer, I think," he told reporters at Emory University in Atlanta, where an exhibition of his personal correspondence, notebooks, photographs, drawings and manuscripts is set to open on Friday. "When [the archive material] was in cardboard boxes and dead computers, it would have been very, very difficult, but now it's all organised," he said.

Last year marked 20 years since the Iranian leader called for Rushdie's execution, saying that his novel The Satanic Verses insulted Islam, Mohammed and the Qur'an. The edict, which followed street protests and book burnings across the Muslim world, forced Rushdie to go into hiding under police protection for almost 10 years.

Back in 2002, in an exclusive interview with January Magazine, Rushdie told us that the book he was promoting at that time -- the collection of essays, Step Across This Line, was, in part, his attempt to stop people from asking about his years in hiding and living under the fatwa.

Rushdie said that “one of the reasons for trying to put into this book that material which deals with those years is that I thought it would sort of draw a line under it. Because, really, the answers to most of the stuff that people have asked me about those years are here, you know? So, in a way, people don’t have to ask me anymore. They just have to read the book.”

At that time, he said he thought it was “about time to declare the subject closed.”

Eight years on, looks like it’s open again.

Dictionary Banned for “Oral Sex”

Merriam Webster’s 10th edition joins an illustrious group of books banned from some American schools, including selected titles by Maya Angelou, Maurice Sendak, Toni Morrison, Judy Blume, Margaret Atwood, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Isabel Allende, John Steinbeck, William Golding and many, many others.

This newest ban comes after a parent in a Riverside, California, school district complained of a “sexually graphic” entry in the dictionary. The Guardian sums things up:

Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for “oral sex”.

Merriam Webster’s 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the “sexually graphic” entry is “just not age appropriate”, according to the area’s local paper.

That local paper indicates that not all parents are happy with the decision to pull the book:

“Censorship in the schools, really? Pretty soon the only dictionary in the school library will be the Bert and Ernie dictionary,” said Emanuel Chavez, the parent of second- and sixth-grade students. “If the kids are exposed to it, it’s up to the parents to explain it to them at their level.”

Board member Rita Peters questioned why one parent’s complaint would lead the district to pull the dictionaries.

“If we’re going to pull a book because it has something on oral sex, then every book in the library with that better be pulled,” she said. “The standard needs to be consistent ... We don’t need parents setting policy.”

Meanwhile, the fate of the dictionary in that school system remains uncertain, while most of the thinking world laughs quite loudly, here, here, and here as well as other places.

Transport Canada Backpedals from Book Ban

Transport Canada has backpedaled from a security statement issued after Christmas that appeared to exclude books and magazines from being taken aboard US-bound planes. From The Globe and Mail:

Canadian travelers flying into the U.S. can take whatever books and magazines they want through airport security.

A spokesman for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority said today that “books and magazines were always allowed and still are on U.S.-bound planes.” Books and magazines, however, weren't included in a list of 13 “items” that Transport Canada approved Dec. 28 for carry-on purposes.

Except, of course, that they weren’t. As I said in a comment to the piece that ran in this space a few days ago, I always figured the “book ban” was a bit of red tape that ran amok. (One of those bureaucratic “oops” that later gets amended by an “oh well.” Which is pretty much what happened. The Globe piece concludes:

Transport Canada issued an “update” on its security measures Monday afternoon this week, but the list of approved items remained at 13, with no addition of books and magazines. The Air Transport Security Authority official indicated today that “a revised list that will be more specific” was in the works from Transport Canada but a media officer with Transport Canada would only say “there might be” a revised or new list.

Regardless, “books would never be refused.” she said. “They can be easily scanned.”

Except, of course, that they were refused at some airports, with reports of such refusals coming in via a Facebook group as recently as yesterday. Things should be better today, though, as CanWest News Service reports:

Transport Canada spokeswoman Melanie Quesnel said passengers in Canada heading to the U.S. "can bring books on planes" and screening officers have been advised to allow that.

Upshot: as expected, there never was an actual “ban” on books on flights bound to the United States from Canada, though there does appear to have been a temporary misplacement of intelligence.

Books Banned on Canada-U.S. Flights

Are books dangerous? A new Transport Canada ban on almost all airline carry-on items would seem to indicate just that.

The new measures were put in place as part of a massive security crackdown following the Christmas Day terrorist attempt. According to The Edmonton Journal, “U.S.-bound air travellers were forced to stow all but the bare essentials in their checked luggage Monday as Transport Canada issued a new ban on almost all carryon luggage.”

The prohibition is intended to get planes running on schedule after time-consuming new security measures introduced on Saturday caused lineups, delays and cancellations across North America, spokesman Patrick Charette said.

And while keeping to schedule is laudable and passenger safety is everyone’s first concern, there is a place where common sense can go out the window. Here is that place:

Transport Canada issued a list of 13 items that are exempt from the new policy. Passengers can still carry-on small purses, coats, laptops, cameras, musical instruments and baby-care supplies. Medication, crutches, canes, walkers, medical devices, special needs items and containers carrying life sustaining items are also exempt.

“Technically, if it is not on the list, it is not allowed,” Charette said.

Surely books are less potentially dangerous than laptop computers and cameras? And, sure: you could theoretically clobber someone with a book, but that’s certainly true of canes, crutches and walkers, as well.

Edmonton International Airport spokeswoman Donna Call said the new rules mean all backpacks and rolling suitcases must be checked. Books, magazines and even children's toys must also be checked, she said. Finally, even exempt items will be limited, which means that a single passenger cannot carry-on a purse, a coat, a laptop and a diaper bag.

So while you’re checking that potentially dangerous book or magazine, the Journal points out that “small electronic devices such as iPods and portable DVD players will be allowed on board ... and passengers are free to purchase books, magazines, snacks and water once they are through security.”

Canadian author Mary Soderstrom has started a (thus far mostly ignored) Facebook group called “Stop Dumbing Down: Allow Books on Airplanes.” Writes Sorderstrom:

The news about what will be allowed on flights to the US from Canada (and perhaps from other countries) is appalling -- no books, it seems! There should be a vigorous protest from book lovers, publishers, writers and everyone concerned about the life of the mind -- or who just likes a good story.

Sorderstrom is right. What sort of message is being sent? And how did this even happen? Yes, safety is important. But cameras? Laptops? iPods? And not books? This is the oddest book banning I’ve ever heard of, one that, as Soderstrom says, should be protested and noted by all of those who love books. If nothing else, as one entry on the Facebook group notes, what are book lovers going to do on flights if they take away our books?

Mockingbird Debate Continues

The debate around the removal of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from a Brampton, Ontario, high school earlier this summer washed not only over Toronto-area newspapers, but right here, onto January Magazine. The issues around the removal of To Kill a Mockingbird are more nuanced than they first appeared, as we witnessed under the weight of many carefully considered -- and a few heated -- comments to the piece we ran earlier this week.

The book has been removed from the school, but the battle is far from over, as explained today by The Toronto Star:

As the dust settles around the latest Mockingbird controversy -- in which a principal at a Brampton school removed the book from Grade 10 English curriculum in June after a parent objected to language in the novel -- another debate has emerged: Is there a better book to teach diverse, multiracial, multi-ethnic students in the GTA about race relations and anti-discrimination in 2009?

“It’s a great book, but how many great books, how many classics have been written over the past five decades that might do a better a job in dealing with these issues?” said George Elliott Clarke, a writer and English professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in African-Canadian literature.

And fair enough: if I were looking for a book to inform children about African-Canadian issues, well ... To Kill a Mockingbird would not be the place to look. But is that why high school students are assigned reading? As I said in a comment to that earlier post, choosing books for young people to read based on the lessons we can cram in is like giving them medicine. Or Brussels sprouts. It’s good for them? Oh stop! Reading is magic. That’s the lesson we need to teach.

To Kill a Mockingbird is slender and engaging. It’s a wonderful book, in many ways, but it’s not a complicated one. Even reluctant readers might find themselves discovering fiction in a way they hadn’t before.

So replace Harper Lee’s book. OK. But do it with something that will help illuminate the place in each child that might otherwise be left dark. The place where they discover that reading is not only about accomplishment, not simply about finishing the assignment, but about the same joy and enjoyment extracted from the other activities they undertake at their leisure. That’s the lesson -- the gift -- that they will carry through their lifetimes. What books will accomplish that?

Ontario High School Bans To Kill a Mockingbird

This item from The Toronto Star is just sad:

The classic literary novel To Kill a Mockingbird is being pulled from the Grade 10 English course at a Brampton high school after a parent complained about the use of a racial epithet in the book.

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America's Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

Though I’d seen a couple of stage versions over the years and, of course, the movie, I didn’t get around to reading Harper Lee’s acclaimed novel until this year. It was worth the wait: To Kill a Mockingbird is a subtly stunning work of fiction. If you haven’t read the book, add it to your must read list. And if there’s a teenager in your life, perhaps buy a copy for him or her, if only to protest that idiot St. Edmund Campion Secondary School parent who would ban a contemporary masterwork through their own lack of intellect and understanding.

Book Burning Alternative Will Be Considered by Court

When a Milwaukee-area’s demands that Francesca Lia Block’s 1995 young adult novel Baby Be-Bop (HarperCollins) be removed from local libraries was refused, the group decided to try another approach. From American Libraries:

Milwaukee-area citizen Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.”

In her 1995 review for Booklist, Frances Bradburn said, “Librarians who are daring -- and caring -- enough to include this evocative, skillfully wrought, and sometimes surrealistic novel in their YA collections will help teenagers begin their adult journey toward love and the realization that, as Dirk’s great-grandmother Gazelle says, ‘Any love that is love is right.’”

Back in Wisconsin, both sides seem to be settling in for a trench war:

For the immediate future, West Bend officials will be dealing with the CCLU’s legal claim. Describing the YA novel by celebrated author Francesca Lia Block as “explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian,” the complaint by Braun, Joseph Kogelmann, Rev. Cleveland Eden, and Robert Brough explains that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” specifically because Baby Be-Bop contains the “n” word and derogatory sexual and political epithets that can incite violence and “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”

As always, January Magazine urges you to protest book-banning activities by reading a banned book.

Toni Morrison Novel Banned in Michigan High School

I loathe stories like this: stories where a ridiculous controversy leads to the closing of a door. From The Muskegon Chronicle:

A high school English teacher in Shelby has been ordered to remove a book by a Pulitzer- and Nobel-award-winning author from her curriculum after members of the community objected to its profanity, sexual references and violence.

“Song of Solomon,” a book by Toni Morrison about an African-American man living in Michigan, was ordered removed from a list of books students could choose to read in Jane Glerum’s advanced placement English class.

School staff and students say that other books may also be censored after a group of community members began complaining about their content. Those books include “The Color Purple,” a book by Alice Walker about an African-American woman abused and raped by her father and husband, and “Johnny Got his Gun” an anti-war book about a severely wounded soldier by Dalton Trumbo.

There’s more to this story, and I encourage you to read it, if only to fan the smoke around your ears. What are these people thinking? Or are they thinking at all? And how is ignorance preferable to the rich conversation that can result when intelligent young people read books that make them think?

Because here at January Magazine we like to reward those who would ban books by making sure the books protested against get lots of extra attention, in case you missed Morrison’s Song of Solomon, it was published in 1977 by Alfred A. Knopf and the most current paperback edition was published by Vintage in 2004.

Wikipedia tells us that Song of Solomon “won the National Books Critics Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature. Barack Obama has listed it as one of his favorite books of all time.”

This is one of the books that’s been on my personal must-read list for a long time. Thanks to the efforts of a handful of narrow-minded parents in Shelby, Michigan, I’m going to order a copy from my local bookseller right now.

FEMA Pulls Controversial Coloring Book

Maybe it’s not a laughing matter. It strikes me as ironic, though, that on May 1st -- Free Comic Book Day -- USA Today should report that FEMA had a removed a “controversial coloring book,” from their Web site for fear it would prove upsetting to some children. From USA Today:

But Rose Olmsted, coordinator of the Freeborn County Crisis Response Team that produced the book after tornadoes hit Glenville, MN, in 2001, defends the project. She tells the Tribune that it was clearly made “as a tool for parents to use with an adult to help children put meaning to what has happened because words are hard to come up with.”

The cover of the coloring book shows a twister carrying away the roof of a house, a sedan that’s been completely crushed and the World Trade Center with one of the towers in flames and a plane on the approach. Inside, similar images wait for children to add color of, I suppose, varying lurid hue, depending on their own mood and temperament.

“We removed the content from our Web site after reviewing www.FEMA.gov for appropriate material,” said FEMA spokesman John Shea in a statement. “FEMA for Kids assists children in understanding disasters and we will continue to post appropriate material that supports its mission.”

Oddly, I’m a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, governments pulling books for any reason always make us look askance. And a pause is definitely the correct response. And a question.

On the other, I’m not sure a coloring book is really a very good tool for helping children bring meaning to frightening world events. How is coloring discussion? And can’t we just sit down with our kids and talk? Why do their need to be tools involved? In my own experience, children have a lot more going on between the ears than we tend to give them credit for. Trusting them with actual information and engaging them in conversation can be a surprising and bonding experience: enriching for both parties.

Meanwhile, if you want to download the comic for yourself and have a peek, The Smoking Gun ran a link when they broke the story. USA Today’s story is here.

Atwood Classic Not Suitable For Teens?

The suitability of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale has been challenged at a Toronto school, according to The Toronto Star.

Toronto's public school board is reviewing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale after one complaint from a parent whose child was studying the novel in a Grade 12 class.

While the board would not discuss the nature of the concern over the 1985 dystopian novel that is used nationwide -- described by some educators as a staple of its genre – a source said it was believed to be over sexuality and criticism of religious fundamentalism.

This is apparently the first time The Handmaid’s Tale has been challenged in Canada, though it ranks 37th on the ALA’s Top 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 to 2000.

The original article is here. In a follow up editorial, The Star’s Living columnist Antonia Zerbisias answers the challenge, saying, in part:

It's a great book and, like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, required reading for my Cold War generation, and Aldous Huxley’s timeless Brave New World, is exactly the kind of literature needed to stimulate thoughtful discussion amongst adolescents who might not otherwise debate much more than who should win American Idol.
Especially in times like these.