Banned Books Week

Hi all,
I thought this would be amusing to put here, and then make a point of reading one of the books.
Of the 100 books listed in the link I have only read 13 :slight_smile:
I feel deprived, so does anyone have a copy of Slaughterhouse Five I can borrow?
Maybe I’ll take a trip down to PageOne tomorrow.

ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksw … uently.htm

PS. any books previously banned in Taiwan that anyone can recommend?

Specifically in Taiwan? As in it was OK somewhere else, but not in Taiwan? And do you have a timeframe on that? e.g. Ulysses was banned everywhere for quite some time, but nobody would even think of banning it now.
I’ve always thought of how I could get one of my novels (if I eventually publish one) banned, as that is the one sure way of achieving success as a novelist.

Hmm…I’ve read 46 of them so far. My school has quite a few of the ones on the list. I have read to my kids.

I just read one of the stories from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz to my 4th graders on Thursday because two of my boys had pulled off the shelf and were looking over it instead of listening to me. It was one of the ones where you read quietly…pause…and then shout something. They all jumped and then burst out laughing for a good five minutes. They were even laughing about it when it was time to go home. I’ve also read several poems from Shel Silverstein’s books, including A Light in the Attic which includes one of my favorite poems, The Little Boy and the Old Man (about how both make the same mistakes and are ignored by adults).

I also have read Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen to my nursery class last year and they loved the video (from Scholastic and Weston Woods’ Where the Wild Things Are and other Maurice Sendak Favorites) and would sing and recite lines from it. But because it shows the hero, little Mickey (who got mixed in the batter), naked, it has a bad rep. Yet no one notices that Olivia the Pig has a little vagina in the book Olivia. Or at least, not yet. :unamused:

It’s amazing that because a few of them deal with explaining sex to young children in a humorous, but honest way that’s appropriate for their comprehension, or feature adolescents going through adolescence, they are on the list. It only goes to show how strong the remnants of a Puritanical beginning are in modern America when it comes to classic literature.