Where's Waldo? No, really, you won't guess.

[sunnyskywalker]

Banned Books Week is coming up, and so I followed a link to the American Library Association's list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.

I'm not surprised to hear of people challenging Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Fantasies by Nancy Friday and The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein. However...

A Light in the Attic (#51)? And Where's Waldo (#88)?

Seriously, people.

Comments

[plasticinecupid.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know WHY. Why challenge ANY book? We live on a planet with aliens-- freakish, mentally warped creatures from Planet Idiot.

[sunnyskywalker]

Because their lives have been ruined by contact with all these ideas outside their comfort zones. RUINED, I tell you! The damage from those filthy cartoon boobies in Where's Waldo can never be undone!

Honestly, I have a hard time imagining a book so terrible that you'd want it locked up somewhere away from people. Why not just explain to everyone you know that it's bad and rant about it on the internet? I have a sneaking suspicion it's ostensibly "to protect teh children!" But, um... well, in most cases, the children are probably fine. It's the parents who feel threatened.

[kameni.livejournal.com]

James and the Giant Peach
A Wrinkle in Time

There are some great books on that list. (And A Wrinkle in Time is presumably too Unitarian for people, or something? Or it encourages rebellion against cardboard authoritarianism?)

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe the kid with the red ball encourages children to question how their PE classes are run? Because I remember feeling, "Hey, this sounds familiar!"

It does read like a list of "Good books to check out."