Posted on 09/25/2014 12:26:51 PM PDT by EveningStar
It's Banned Books Week! But people are trying to keep great books out of libraries and schools every hour of every day, year round. And often, people's reasons for challenging these titles are really, really... outlandish. Here are 12 SF and fantasy books that people have given incomprehensible reasons for banning.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
If that is so-then parents most definitely need to communicate with their kids-and don’t use the school’s library-buy the books on the kid’s required reading list from B&N or Amazon-or check them out at the public library-that way you, the parent keep control. Don’t give a school system you mistrust control over anything like that with your kids. And complaining will never change a school promoting whatever agenda they choose-so parents need to take control themselves, quietly and firmly.
My husband and I worked our asses off to send the cub to private school-but we did not use their library-we bought all books ourselves.
What science?
Where do you think the yeast come from? It’s Toe Jam Wine ‘66 fine year.
My mom used to joke that books she read were banned in Boston, but like you, I haven’t heard anyone say that in years...
Good point.
The books are no longer “banned”, and in some cases never really were. But the school system is promoting the books to kids as “banned” books in order to get them to read them.
Another good point. It's more the ALA and librarians who are promoting "Banned Books Week" to increase their own visibility, though. It's the one time a year that a lot of people actually hear anything about libraries.
I got involved another way. The best defense is having your kids able to recognize truth from lies and to recognize the psychological attacks and the emotional pleas used by the left.
My kids have long understood that the schools push anti-Christian themes. And they know how to recognize them.
When the school gave them lists of banned books, I pointed out that they were using reverse psychology to get them to read them.
When they assigned my daughter a book that cast a homosexual as persecuted, I read the book too. (She came to me and asked me to read it.) I pointed out the false attacks on the bible, the false caricature painted of the church, and plays on emotion to get the reader to identify with the homosexual.
That was great the way KV destroyed their reasoning.
Have always been in awe of KV`s description of the
fire bombing of Dresden.
Ever read his books? The Oz series after the first one (there are 13)? Pure communism.
That "Banned in Boston" line turns up a lot in 1950s movies. I think the last thing Boston tried to ban was the movie Caligula back in the early 80s.
This bit from Wikipedia was interesting in tracing the evolution and extinction of the group behind most of the banning:
The New England Watch and Ward Society (founded as the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice) was a Boston, Massachusetts organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. After the 1920s, its emphasis changed to combating the spread of gambling. In 1957 the organization's name was changed to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and in 1967 it became the Massachusetts Council on Crime and Correction. In 1975 it was merged with another organization to form Community Resources for Justice, a group that promotes prison reform and rights for ex-convicts.
One interesting thing about "banned books" is that large university libraries had and probably still have collections of controversial or pornographic materials that they keep under lock and key. Is that kind of restricted access "banning"?
Bone? Racist? ROTFLMAOPIMP!
Good for you, reading with your kids is always a great idea-and as you did, a good way to make sure they actually understand what they are reading about. We started reading to/with the cub in the evenings from her earliest years, reading out loud and getting her into the act as she learned to read.
MrT5 and I kept up the evening reading out loud, taking turns, but with books the two of us liked, especially on stormy nights, when the DirecTV don’t work anyway. It is one of the things I miss the most.
Vonnegut’s letter to his parents after he was liberated is pretty great:
FROM:
Pfc. K. Vonnegut, Jr.,
12102964 U. S. Army.
TO:
Kurt Vonnegut,
Williams Creek,
Indianapolis, Indiana.
Dear people:
I’m told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than “missing in action.” Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do — in precis:
I’ve been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler’s last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges’ First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren’t much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I’m told, but I’ll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren’t wounded. For that much thank God.
Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations — the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn’t room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year’s Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn’t.
Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner. I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th. I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards. We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor. Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day. After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came. They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: — one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.
On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden — possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.
After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.
When General Patton took Leipzig we were evacuated on foot to (’the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border’?). There we remained until the war ended. Our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians were intent on mopping up isolated outlaw resistance in our sector. Their planes (P-39’s) strafed and bombed us, killing fourteen, but not me.
Eight of us stole a team and wagon. We traveled and looted our way through Sudetenland and Saxony for eight days, living like kings. The Russians are crazy about Americans. The Russians picked us up in Dresden. We rode from there to the American lines at Halle in Lend-Lease Ford trucks. We’ve since been flown to Le Havre.
I’m writing from a Red Cross Club in the Le Havre P.O.W. Repatriation Camp. I’m being wonderfully well feed and entertained. The state-bound ships are jammed, naturally, so I’ll have to be patient. I hope to be home in a month. Once home I’ll be given twenty-one days recuperation at Atterbury, about $600 back pay and — get this — sixty (60) days furlough.
I’ve too damned much to say, the rest will have to wait, I can’t receive mail here so don’t write.
May 29, 1945
Love,
Kurt - Jr.
Bookmark for later
My son would like this
He sure was a beautiful writer.
ping
Banning a book about burning books!
I love Farenheight 451. The movie Equilibrium (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_48) is an excellent modern take on it.
Most of these 'bans' amount to a simple decision to remove a book from a recommendation list; which allows every self-imagined rebel to prove how bad-ass they are by reading some novel.
Firefly...
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