Book Censorship

Emily’s presentation on book censorship was probably the most interesting topic that I’ve seen addressed thus far. When she passed out the list of banned books before class began, as I flipped through it I recognized over a third of the books, and about four or five on each page seemed to be a childhood favorite. First of all, A Wrinkle in Time and The Catcher in the Rye are two of the greatest books ever written, in my opinion. What do these people want kids to read in school, the Babysitter’s Club series? Please. If you’re not going to introduce thought-provoking literature early on in a child’s life, you may as well forget it. It’s no coincidence that nearly everyone in our class recognized the books on that list as favorites—educated adults come from educated children. We were exposed to this material at a young age, and here we are at Clemson University, getting a quality education and dealing with controversial material every day. It really angers me that religious groups think that they can stop children from exposure to good literature. Based on the clips that Emily showed in class, it seems like they are just reaching for something to gripe about. Harry Potter? Get real, people. Are your children’s bedtime stories limited to bible readings? Emily also brought up a something that I hadn’t really thought about—“stealth censorship.” Kind of ironic how the book-banners want to remove books for depicting immoral behaviors and attitudes… and yet they think it’s perfectly ok to go out and steal these books from libraries. Maybe their children will grow up to be kleptos instead of witches or hoodlums?