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Frequently Challenged Books in the 21st Century


Graeme

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From the American Library Association:

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

It's currently showing the top ten most challenged books for up each year upto 2014.

I think the lists are more amusing than saying anything important. The number of challenges each year is listed, and it's only around 500 a year. For a nation with the population of the USA, that shows that most people aren't concerned.

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Some of the books on that list are ridiculous. A book explaining puberty to kids is offensive because it talks about body parts? Uh, what should it talk about? Or is it wrong to explain to kids in words they can understand what is going on with them? Another one is excoriated for talking about homosexuality. Is that something no one should talk about?

I think the people who write to complain about these are off-the-wall crazies. No one should pay any mind to them. Some best-selling authors are on that list. Shows how out of touch the complainers are.

C

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As I said, I found it more amusing than anything else.

From my point of view, besides the obviously deranged rant objections, the ones I found interesting were two books I remember were assigned reading when I was back in school: Of Mice and Men, and Brave New World. I think whoever nominated these would probably have found something to object to in almost every book on the texts list for English when I was growing up. My teacher was good -- she knew I had a strong interest in science fiction and there was one such book on the list, so she was going to assign it...until she told me what it was and I told her I had already read it and didn't like it. I'd probably like it now, but at that age I wasn't adventure and excitement, and that book was more a study in culture, which my 15-year-old self found boring.... :tongue:

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I was not familiar with a number of the challenged books, but I was intrigued enough to do some research about the Captain Underpants series. A quick review of the detailed Wikipedia entry on this series shows that it is wild and crazy and no doubt great fun for grade school boys. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Underpants and read the section on Characters.

R

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