Banned Books Week Jumps the Shark?
We’re in the midst of Banned Books Week 09, and there seems to be a collective yawn this year. Librarian.net notes that most of the organizations co-sponsoring the event with the American Library Association can’t be bothered to mention it on their own web sites. There’s no mention of it on the ALA’s home page either (unless you click through their little news thing-y to get to the sixth most important current news item). So all is well then?
The Wall Street Journal ran a contrarian view (like they do) from the head of something called the Institute for American Values, claiming that the real issue is that the ALA objects to “attempts by parents to guide their children’s education.” I think the real problem, Mr. IAV, are parents who decide, often without reading a book first, that no children at their library or school should be “exposed” to a book that they have some problem with - like gay penguins or boy wizards.
Another real problem may be that an American president refused to honor the most beloved children’s authors of our lifetimes, because her books promote witchcraft.
Anyway, while clicking around, I did come across this sweet poster in the ALA store:
September 30, 2009 10:40 am 2 Comments
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By Dr J, September 30, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
I thought the Gwinnett County School Board could never be topped. But today I learned that the Beaumont (Texas) Independent School District has banned “Friday Night Lights,” the book on which the movie and tv series are based.
Allow that to sink in for a moment. Texans are now banning non-fiction books. Non. Fiction. Books.
Can’t have those kids being exposed to too much reality, after all.
http://www.aclutx.org/article.php?aid=776
By Tim, September 30, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
About. Football.
Whoa.
Relax though. It’s just parents trying to guide their children’s education.