Given my ability to do anything on time these days, I’m going to go ahead and share the latest news on banned books now, as all is not quiet on the censorship front (to mangle the words of  Erich Maria Remarque, himself author of a banned book).  Following the recent controversy over the banning of Slaughterhouse Five and Twenty Boy Summer (which I’ve already written about) just a few days ago the Sherlock Holmes novella A Study in Scarlet was banned  in Albermarle County, Virginia for its anti-Mormon sentiment (which I’m afraid I missed noticing when I devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories in middle school. It seems like kids don’t pick up nearly what adults do from many of these books). Sex, violence, and religion aren’t the only reasons parents challenge books, although those are common reasons, and it’s not only conservatives who object to the content of books in libraries and schools. Brave New World was banned in a school district in Seattle for its portrayal of American Indians as savages, and a new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published with the removal of a word we dare not say these days, to make it palatable for schools. Sometimes a word is all it takes.

A lot of people point out that during Banned Books Week, ALA also mentions challenged books (and therefore, it appears that more books are banned than actually are).  The list below, though, is of books actually removed from libraries in the past six months (courtesy of information provided by the ALA for this article in USA Today). Read any of them? Maybe it’s time.

1. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher

2. Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root

3. The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan

4. Burn, by Suzanne Phillips

5. Great Soul, by Joseph Lelyveld

6. It’s a Book, by Lane Smith

7. Lovingly Alice, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

8. The Marbury Lens, by Andrew Smith

9. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

10. Mobile Suit Gundam: Seed Astray Vol. 3, by Tomohiro Chiba

11. My Darling, My Hamburger, by Paul Zindel

12. The Patron Saint of Butterflies, by Cecilia Galante

13. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

14. Pit Bulls and Tenacious Guard Dogs, by Carl Semencic

15. Push, by Sapphire

16. Shooting Star, by Fredrick McKissack Jr.

17. The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley, by Colin Thompson

18. Vegan Virgin Valentine, by Carolyn Mackler

19. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones

20. “What’s Happening to My Body?”: Book for Boys, by Lynda Madaras with Area Madaras

Source: Jennifer Petersen, the American Library Association