Meanwhile, textbooks for elementary and high schools must be vetted by state and local officials, an entirely different challenge. Arizona, for example, has banned ethnic studies classes statewide; this week, to remain in complaince and receive millions of dollars in funding, Tucson schools removed a number of now-banned books, including “Chicano!: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement” by Arturo Rosales and William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Does Apple really want to jump into the middle of that?

What? Arizona banned ethnic study classes?  Books on Hispanic civil rights and The Tempest are being removed from libraries?  Wait.  William Shakespeare’s The Tempest?  A Tucson teacher explains the predicament that the law places on teachers:

We study this work by Shakespeare using the work of renowned historian Ronald Takaki and the chapter “The Tempest in the Wilderness” from his a book A Different Mirror where he uses the play to explore the early English settlements on this continent and English imperialism. From there, we immerse ourselves in the play and discuss the beauty of the language, Shakespeare’s multiple perspectives on colonization, and the brilliant and courageous attention he gives to such important issues…However, TUSD is basing our compliance upon their appeal and Mr. Kowall’s ruling. Thus, I believe our administrators advised me properly when they said to avoid texts, units, or lessons with race and oppression as a central focus…. In clearer words, if I avoid discussing such themes in class, yet the students see the themes and decide to write, discuss or ask questions in class, we may also be found to be in violation…Due to the madness of this situation and our fragile positions as instructors who will be frequently observed for compliance, and be asked to produce examples of student work as proof of our compliance, I cannot disagree with their advice. Now we are in the position of having to rule out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, etc. for the exact same reasons.

So, apparently, until further guidance is provided, teachers have to eliminate teaching anything that students may interpret on their own as containing themes about civil rights, race, colonialism, etc.  Doubleplusgood.

Authors weigh in on Amazon’s heavy handed Christmas tactics.    The outrage of the authors may be the least of Amazon’s worries.

This week is Banned Book Week.  Do your part to defend books.  Check out this handy map of documented book challenges across the US from 2007-2011 to see what has happened in your area.

First, I read a lot of fiction.  Of course, everyone knows that serious people do not read fiction.

…five of the six are novels, and the near-absence of nonfiction sends the wrong message for any president, because it sets him up for the charge that he is out of touch with reality.

Second, every year I make a reading resolution to read more books by women.   I usually come up short and repeat the vow. This year is probably my best year yet, and my books still aren’t split 50/50.  I’m probably also short on a representative number of books by minorities and/or works in translation.  I try not to beat myself up about it and look for ways to improve instead.  This approach doesn’t work when you’re President.  Not reading more books by women is prejudice:

Now the fact that the president of the United States apparently doesn’t read women writers is not the greatest crisis facing the arts, much less the nation — but it’s upsetting nevertheless. As I suspect Obama would agree, matters of prejudice are never entirely minor, even when their manifestations may seem relatively benign.

OK.  I’m now President and I’m going on vacation. None of that purchasing books at the local indie bookstore that appeal to me on the spot or I heard something good about on NPR or have pretty covers, like I do.  I’d be best served to have an elite commission make sure that they are properly distributed among author sex, nationality, color, religion, and font selection.  And go heavy on the lady writer non-fiction, please.

No.  If I were President, I think that I would ultimately do what the guy before Mr. Obama did and lie my ass off.  Apparently, people will believe you.

George W. Bush boasted an almost exclusive focus on works of history and biography, devoting the summer of 2006 (the White House announced) to reading life stories of Lincoln, Mao, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Babe Ruth, and Roberto Clemente—as well as heady accounts on the position of Muslim women and major diseases (polio and influenza) that exerted a profound impact on the United States. His only chosen work of fiction, the existentialist Camus classic The Stranger, might have been part of an effort to repair tattered relations with France, or to make up for assignments he blithely ignored during prep school at Andover.

Sure.  Bush may have been wanting to patch up relations with France.  Reading Camus would be a sound way to do that.  Nice theory.  Or you could just watch the tape on how the Camus came to pass:
 

 
I ranted about this reading competition a while back. My opinion on the matter stands.

Read the applicable passage. I think Ignatius was onto something.

Like poisonous, dangerous and addictive drugs which are not available for everyone without restrictions … as a publisher, librarian or an official in the book industry, we don’t have the right to make [such books] available to those without knowledge. We should provide them with healthy and good books.

Apparently there are books that should be available only to those with “knowledge”, and the censor decides that he/she is a person with knowledge that must protect others.  This role of the censor as protector seems to be especially in play where children are involved.  There is no shortage of people who would appoint themselves as protectors of children.

For example, This Guy, an assistant college professor, decided to review the curriculum of a local school board and did not like what he saw.  No, sir.  His unsolicited efforts on behalf of the children lead to the removal of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler’s young adult novel Twenty Boy Summer from the school curriculum and a local library. The books are banned.  Ockler has  posted a thoughtful response to the news.

I read Slaughterhouse-Five as a teen.  I remember that it was that book in particular that opened my eyes to the possibilities of the novel.  Vonnegut broke so many rules it was astounding to me.   It was an exhilarating realization that literature, and life in general, didn’t have to be bound by convention.  It was my portal to the world of experimental and offbeat fiction, which is the literary neighborhood that I spend most of my time in today.  Thankfully there was no one with “knowledge” that decided that it should be withheld from me because it wasn’t “good and healthy.”

I think that efforts to censor books for children, but especially for teens, does them the disservice of underestimating their intelligence and their need to understand the world around them as it exists, no as we’d like it to be.  Luckily, there are the occassional hints of reason that bubble up to the surface.  A school district in the Pacific Northwest had banned Sherman Alexie’s powerful novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian only to reverse their decision a year later.  The board changed its mind when they did something remarkable and unusual – they read the novel.

The book’s 14-year-old protagonist struggles with poverty, racism and death.

Those themes, and particularly the main character’s perseverance in the face of these challenges, bear important lessons for students, Donahoe said.

“When I’m voting a book out of the classroom, I’m denying parents the right to choose to have that book read by their students,” he said.

Exactly.

That’s about all I have to say on the subject.  Add your views to #oxfordcomma(s) or in the comments.  Music, please:

Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
[See post to listen to audio]

Begin by clearing your head.  A few scotches at the hotel bar should do the trick.  Picture the most superficial impressions of your time at Book Expo America.  Got it?  It’s time to write.   You’ll probably want to start by making an offhand  judgement of all children’s books.

I have nothing against children’s books, but when all of them seem to participate in a contest of garishness for the most outrageous combination of colors, the esthetic model that is being set up is accountable for the bad taste of generations.

Nice start.  Nothing good ever follows a “but.”  Next, you’ll want to make an unsubstantaited statement about what is “widely known.” Something like this:

…the publication of serious literature, and particularly of literary fiction, has been abandoned…

Yep.  That’ll do.  Alright, now in your third paragraph you’ll want to sound coherent, but use exclamation marks to ensure the reader knows what’s important!   Now it’s time to blindside the readers with your grand finale.  You’ll want to conclude with a sweeping indictment of all that you don’t understand.  Start with gross and distorted generalizations about book blogs that conflates everything that you’ve ever halfway heard about books, blogs, and the death of criticism into a few sentences:

Book blogging has become a subculture whose members are mostly women between 20 and 50 years old, often known as “mommy bloggers” because they are housewives who blog about romance novels, horror/vampire stories and paranormal novels. Many of them have hundreds of followers on Twitter, and the result is that they have the power to establish new trends… And the publishing industry has started to take them seriously.

Awesome!  And it’s true, yall!  Now denigrate young women AND belittle technology WHILE flaunting your ignorance:

At the Book Bloggers reception I met many girls in their early twenties who already have hundreds of followers on Twitter. As far as I could tell, I was the only person at the convention who doesn’t tweet.

Trifecta!  And then finish with a crescendo of babble that makes little sense.  Excellent.  Now find a graphic that will add insult to injury.  Is your editor drunk or otherwise  asleep at the wheel?  File that story!  Your work here is done.  Nice job!

I love the public library service for what it did for me as a child and as a student and as an adult. I love it because its presence in a town or a city reminds us that there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about, things that have the power to baffle the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism, things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight.

Well that’s in England.  Surely, it wouldn’t happen here? It’s already happening.  Texas has proposed reducing state library expenditures to $0 (following California’s lead).

Send the manuscript through Spellcheck™. I mean, “sivilized”?! Come on. To be honest, I can’t even understand why people think this is such a great book, when Twain couldn’t even spell.

References to events in U.S. History tending toward anything other than a reverence for American Exceptionalism that Glenn Beck would approve: Deleted.

The sarcastic parts: Out.

Suggestions that Christians and businessmen have on occasion behaved in anything less than a fully Christ-like fashion: Cut.

“Harelip” is an insensitive term for people born with cleft lips. Henceforth, change every mention of “the Harelip” to “the pre-operative plastic surgery patient.”

This is America. No one around here knows what a “Dauphin” is and can’t be troubled to look it up on dictionary.com, and the name “The Dolphin” serves only to confuse. Replace “Dauphin” and “The Dolphin” with “The Pretender—Not Royalty at All, and Certainly Not a Marine Mammal.”

“Pap” is a disrespectful way to refer to Huck’s father. Replace “Pap” with “the esteemed Chairman of the local Tea Party.” (Seriously. Check out Pap’s soliloquy from Chapter VI, which Tim flagged for me way back last year.

Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger SLAVE there from Ohio–a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane–the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that nigger SLAVE vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin.

Sound familiar? But I digress.)

Say what you want about these edits, but Professor Gribben had it right: it will surely be easier to assign our version to 21^st-century students. Because our version will be eight pages long, and we’ll post all the answers to the test on the Internet.

(Please also see this new edition of the novel, ed.)