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7855. Ms. No - 10/5/2005 5:23:33 PM I've read 30 of the ones on the list in full and about ten others in part.
What I can't understand is how the list is so small, I mean, if you're going to go out of your way to put something like the Sleeping Beauty Triology on it, then why not list every other erotic novel out there?
Or is it only the most popular and also banned novels or something? 7856. Ms. No - 10/5/2005 5:24:35 PM Mac,
Hmm...I've only missed one selection on that list --- McGahern's Amonst Women. 7857. jayackroyd - 10/5/2005 5:27:47 PM That's the top 100--the most frequently banned--of 7000 odd banned books. 7858. Ms. No - 10/5/2005 6:25:57 PM There are some totally bizarre choices on that list. Not that I don't find the idea of banning any books bizarre from the get-go, but How to Eat Fried Worms? Are they serious? 7859. thoughtful - 10/5/2005 7:14:28 PM I was watching an AEI thing late at night and there was a woman on talking about how no wonder children don't read any more. She was talking about how political correctness has taken all life out of books. She said it was not just the right or the left, but everyone who got a say in which books were used to teach children to read. The left wouldn't allow books where mommy was depicted as a homemaker...the right wouldn't allow books showing cows as their utters were too sexy...the nutritionists wouldn't allow books that talked about ice cream or pizza as it's not good food. The result is books that are so bland and so out of touch with real experience that no one want to read them.
So whether books get banned or not, the impact in educational circles is far more insidious. 7860. judithathome - 10/5/2005 7:17:44 PM Those insidious utters on cows are almost as risque as their udders! ;-) 7861. thoughtful - 10/5/2005 7:29:34 PM did I do that???? That's udderly ridiculous!
There's something about how homonyms are stored in the brain that makes us blind to them when typing. The other day I actually typed hour for our!
and it's only getting worse. 7862. judithathome - 10/5/2005 7:31:39 PM For me, too...I was just comforted that it happens to others...or should I say, udders? 7863. PelleNilsson - 10/5/2005 8:30:40 PM Are utters and udders really homonyms in standard American English? 7864. Ms. No - 10/5/2005 8:39:05 PM Yep. They shouldn't be, of course, but that's why were not British. 7865. jayackroyd - 10/5/2005 9:08:43 PM Those aren't homonyms for me. I definitely voice the d's in udder. "Mary" and "marry" but not "merry", are as are "cot" and "caught."
These books are those banned by political organizations from libraries, including school libraries. The textbooks thoughtful is referring to are hopeless in any case, but there is something appalling about not letting children who want to read The Chocolate War read it. 7866. arkymalarky - 10/6/2005 12:21:01 AM I'd only read thirteen, but I've taught several of them, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 7867. arkymalarky - 10/6/2005 12:22:06 AM I've also taught several that I'm surprised didn't make the list, considering what's on it. I didn't look at whether they distinguished between high school and elementary libraries. 7868. Macnas - 10/6/2005 10:55:17 AM I have to admit, I am one for finding books which I read as a child and giving them to my kids.
Beatrix Potter, with her funny and vivid stories, does not seem to be welcome in school any more.
My favourite is Squirrel Nutkin, life, death, mutilation and a hint of paganism.
I also found Enid Blytons "The 3 golliwogs" but decided against giving them that to read. Both my children have black friends, something I, and 99.9% of my generation never had. Personally, I never made a connection between the characters in Blytons books with real people, and like many others just enjoyed the stories. However, looking at it now, and seeing how my children would of course make a connection, it isn't suitable anymore. 7869. ScottLoar - 10/6/2005 2:46:30 PM I never thought to give my daughter Little Black Sambo or recite some of the cruder rhymes I grew up with, but when she reached that age of discriminate understanding of literature I nudged certain works towards her. One was To Kill a Mockingbird, later Chidiock Tichborne's Elegy, Ted Hughe's Hawk Roosting, poems by Li Po. I'm still doing so, and she's nudging books to me and poems as well, understandably those of Silvia Plaith.
Most recently my wife and I visited The Art Institute of Chicago's exhibit "Toulouse Lautrec and Montmarte" which thrilled me to no end. I urged this on my daughter who came back with the same enthusiasm and the same comment on his paintings, "you see exactly as did Lautrec, there's no distance between what he saw and what you see".
I was so very, very pleased we shared the same mind. 7870. jayackroyd - 10/6/2005 3:15:28 PM Little Black Sambo is widely beloved. It's funny, too, that people the story was about an African kid. There are no tigers in Africa. The kid is Indian. The author's a Brit. The kid's a wog, not a Negro.
There have been some recastings, one of them with illustrations by the renowned black illustrator Jerry Pinkney.
7871. jayackroyd - 10/6/2005 3:20:59 PM Mac,
You'd have no trouble finding Beatrix Potter here. There's some store that seems to specialize in ceramics with images of Beatrix Potter characters on it. I too remember Squirrel Nutkin.
All,
I know someone who has been asked for advice on the construction of a children's book library, for reference by publishing folks in the business. They were looking for especially beloved children's books. Have any?
(For reasons that I don't entirely understand this request does not include the Seuss books and similar "easy readers" like PD Eastman's Go Dog Go or, a favorite of mine, A Fly Went By) 7872. Macnas - 10/6/2005 3:41:13 PM Jay,
I meant that Beatrix Potter's works do not appear anymore in school libraries, or none that I can see at any rate. The general availability of her books, and indeed the long lasting industry in recreating the outstanding artwork in her stories as figurines (spelling?) is still as strong here as it ever was.
And on the books for the childrens library, do you mean they are actually looking for donations of suitable books, or advice on what would be suitable? 7873. ScottLoar - 10/6/2005 3:41:26 PM Such subtleties about Little Black Sambo escaped me, my classmates, my teacher during my first year of primary school in the segregated American South, but thanks for setting me right 50 years after the fact. Even at a tender age I'd knowledge of the Brothers Grimm and understood fairy tales took license with the truth, so it wouldn't have troubled me to hear of tigers in Africa anymore than the tiger turning into butter and Sambo eating what we all ate - pancakes. 7874. jayackroyd - 10/6/2005 3:57:02 PM Escaped me too, in New England. It's funny, though. Helen Bannerman wrote a story about an Indian boy, read by contemporaries as a story about an Indian boy. 75 years later, kids and their parents were reading the same story with the same illustrations, but they read about an African boy. Now it is still about an African boy, and effectively banned--to the point where the book is effectively gone in its original incarnation.
Now as a depiction of an Indian boy, it is no doubt just as racist. The changes in its perception are nonetheless interesting.
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