To commemorate Banned Books Week 2011, the present board of the Charlton (MA) Public Library voted to override an earlier board and shelve a particular version of Eve’s Diary by Mark Twain. The seductive line drawings were apparently too much for one library board member to cope with back in 1906. As usual, Twain gets the last laugh.
But the censors are still out in force: since 1982, some 11,000 books have been challenged.
This week, we’ll look at a couple of important stories from the news.
This is Banned Books Week. It started Saturday and continues through this coming Saturday.
There’s never a season when someone somewhere doesn’t think, “I know better than everyone else. I certainly haven’t read this book, and I don’t think anyone should read it either.” There are all sorts of mindsets that can lead to this disease: “God (by whatever name) hates this book”; “I hate this book”; “We have to protect the public’s morals”; “Think of the children.”
Continue reading “Pen to Paper: Banned Books and Unfunded Studies”