Sometimes a picture can save more than a thousand words. As we mark Banned Books Week, an image serves as a reminder of the importance of protecting our freedom to read. In this case a photograph of the parking garage of the Kansas City Public Library in Missouri.
The books featured on this facade were chosen by citizens, who voted for their favorite titles. Interesting, most of the winners have something else in common: they were challenged by would-be censors, who requested that the books be removed from school and/or public libraries. For example Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird remains one of the most frequently challenged books in the United States. The book’s use of racial epithets and profanity, along with frank discussion of racism and rape, has sparked outrage among those on both sides of the political spectrum. Similar complaints have been lodged against Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Also on the censor’s hit parade, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has been challenged for promoting “witchcraft and satanism.” Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been deemed dangerous by some for its “glorification of teen sex and suicide.” And even the seemingly benign children’s classic, Charlotte’s Web, has been questioned because the heroine “hears voices'” coming from the animals on her parent’s farm. Sounds like the citizens of Kansas City have highly suspect reading tastes, according to some.
Try googling your own favorite book’s title along with the word “censorship” and you may be surprised by what you find. My own favorite, Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones, was challenged in June of 2009 as being “totally inappropriate for students to read,” by the parent of an Arkansas high school student. The fact that the book was published 260 years ago has apparently had no effect on its ability to poison the minds of impressionable readers.
Thanks to Book Patrol’s Stephen J. Gertz for the photo that inspired this story.
Of Related Interest: Banned Books Week Coming Soon and Books Banned, Author Imprisoned