Would you ban these books?
The Christian Science Monitor has recently published a rather sobering list of the books noted by the American Library Association as the most frequently 'challenged' during 2000. It's mostly an extraordinary mixture of children's books (thought elsewhere to be helpfully encouraging children to read) and literary novels, which deal with major issues of our time:
- Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, for occult/Satanism and antifamily themes.
- The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, for violence and offensive language.
- Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for sexual content.
- Killing Mr. Griffin, by Lois Duncan, for violence and sexual content.
- Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, for using offensive language, racism, and violence.
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, for being too explicit in the book's portrayal of rape and other sexual abuse.
- Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers, for offensive language, racism, and violence.
- Scary Stories series, by Alvin Schwartz, for violence and occult themes.
- The Terrorist, by Caroline Cooney, for negatively portraying the Islamic religion and Arabs.
- The Giver, by Lois Lowry, for being sexually explicit, having occult themes, violence.