This document summarizes information about several books that have been banned from schools or other institutions over concerns about their content. It discusses bans of the following books: - The Color Purple by Alice Walker due to graphic sexual content and violence. - The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison due to a rape scene. - 1984 by George Orwell due to social/political themes and sexual content. - Animal Farm by George Orwell which was banned in some countries. - A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein due to poems about disobeying parents. - Dictionaries which were banned in some places due to definitions of words. - Brown Bear,

1. Book Banning
From the ridiculous to the sublime
Lynetta Currie Cycle 52

2. Art lost to
neglect &
changing mores
+ For those who have read the fragmented remains of the Greek poet, Sappho the loss
of most of her poetic corpus is something to regret. With a mere two complete poems
extant from nine books of verse, much is left to the imagination….
+ In a world dominated by male voices whose view of life, the universe and everything
was the loudest and most respected, Sappho’s songs were regarded as
extraordinary. So revered was she that the ancients called her the Tenth Muse, and
her songs were passed down over centuries, inspiring generations of poets, none of
whom managed to replicate her command of metre and sensual artistry.
+ How Sappho managed to acquire the educational acumen to compose her
masterpieces has sometimes baffled both ancient and modern scholars. Women lived
quiet and controlled lives in ancient Mediterranean cultures with limited, if any, access
to formal education. If there were any perceived need to teach a girl basic skills in
reading, writing and arithmetic, it was only to equip her to run a household once she
was married-off.
+ Even if a girl demonstrated extraordinary artistic skills, there was usually no avenue to
express them, as the aspirations of women were limited to marriage and motherhood.
Females who displayed a talent were normally suppressed and regarded with
suspicion. Because men were the artists, intellects and leaders. Ergo, for a woman to
possess such qualities meant she also possessed a masculinity that set her apart
from nature.
+ Sappho was born in the city of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, off the coast of
Turkey in the late 7th Century BC. Mytilene appears to have been an enlightened
society compared to other communities in Archaic Greece. Sappho’s works clearly
indicate that women – at least from her privileged social standing – had access to a
formal education that included training in choral composition, musical accomplishment
and performance.

3. The fate of the Library of Alexandria
The fate of that great wealth of books remains provocative and
controversial. For centuries the main point of contention was
whether or not the library (or libraries—as two sites existed)
survived until the Arab conquest of Alexandria in the 7th
century. In the 21st century, however, the topic has cooled
down, and there is growing agreement among serious scholars
that both libraries had both perished long before the Arab
conquest. Scholars further believe that there is enough
evidence to show that the destruction of the two libraries
occurred at different times.
+ I must admit that, like many of my generation, I have a soft spot for
Sagan. He was an excellent public educator and something of a
showman, who could bring the wonder of science to a broader audience
in ways that many of his colleagues could not. His scientific work was
not inconsiderable in scope and impact, but he was best known for his
popular writing and work to bring science to the general public through
mass media, including a novel – Contact (1985), later made into the
1997 Jodie Foster movie of the same name – and books on everything
from the origins of language to scepticism, extraterrestrial intelligence
and the urgent need for nuclear disarmament. But it was his 1980 TV
series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage that made him a household
name. It became the most widely watched public television series of
the 1980s and virtually single-handedly established a new kind of public
science education. Sagan took a wide-ranging theme of the history of
the cosmos and how we humans have come to understand it, using
science and reason. It was the way he used the history of science to
explain scientific concepts that intrigued me as a teenager, though I was
later to learn that Sagan was a much better scientist and presenter than
he was a historian.
+ Sagan wrote the series and its accompanying best-selling book in 1978-
79, in the shadow of the Cold War, the era of Apartheid and the wake of
the Iranian Revolution and years of radical terrorism. The final episode
of the series, “Who Speaks for Earth?”, was a reflection on the future of
humanity and a plea for sanity in the face of increasing threats to our
civilisation. And it’s in this context that Sagan tells a moral fable of the
Great Library of Alexandria and its fall to the forces of irrationality and
superstition:

4. Rare soldier's diary reveals
secret massacre of Indigenous
Tasmanians after almost 200
years
+ The diary belonged to Private Robert McNally, posted
to Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s, and records in
gritty detail colonial life and encounters with settlers
and a notorious bushranger.
+ But it's his account of his part in the cover up a
massacre of men and women on March 21, 1827,
near Campbell Town in the Northern Midlands, that
stunned University of Tasmania history professor Pam
Sharpe.
+ Searching the National Library of Ireland catalogue for
documents about settlers, Professor Sharpe found a
note referring to "two volumes in bad condition" of a
soldier's writings.
+ Unearthed, the diaries were identified as the work of
McNally, an Irishman who served in Ireland, India,
Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, Professor Sharpe
told ABC Radio Hobart.

5. 1933 Book
Burnings
On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of
works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.”
Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann and Remarque,
among many other well-known intellectuals, scientists and cultural figures, many of whom were Jewish.
The largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear
a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish
intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’ “right to clean up the debris of the past.”
The response to the book burnings was immediate and widespread. Counter demonstrations took place in
New York and other American cities, including Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago. Journalists in the
American and world press expressed shock and dismay at these attacks on German intellectual freedom,
and various authors wrote in support of their assaulted German brethren. Artists, writers, doctors, and
other intellectuals fled Germany, prompted by the barbarity of the book burnings and by continuing acts of
Nazi persecution.
Such barbarity was just the beginning, however. One can see in retrospect how the book burnings and
other steps to remove “Jewish influence” from German institutions foreshadowed much more catastrophic
Nazi plans for the Jews of Europe. Eerily, among the books consigned to the flames in 1933 were the
works of the nineteenth century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who in 1822 penned the prophetic words,
“Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”

6. WESTERN RUSH TO BAN
EVERYTHING RUSSIAN SMACKS OF
TOTALITARIANISM
• “I realize what is happening in
Ukraine is horrible, and I feel like
crying just thinking about it. But
what is happening in Italy is
ridiculous. Not only is being a
living Russian wrong … but also
being a dead Russian, who was
sentenced to death in 1849
because he read a forbidden
thing. That an Italian university
would ban a course on an author
like Dostoevsky is unbelievable.”
Dostoevsky’s work includes iconic
existential titles like Notes From
The Underground, Crime and
Punishment, and The Brothers
Karamazov. Dostoevsky
was sentenced to death for
reading banned books in 1849 for
his activities with a “radical
intellectual discussion group”
called the Petrashevsky Circle. His
execution was stayed at the last
Middle East Eye
MIC.com

7. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker has
been banned in schools all over the
country since 1984, due to its graphic
sexual content and situations of violence
and abuse. While “The Color Purple”
contains a lot of controversial content,
it's necessary to the story and is what
makes the book so real and unique.
In March 1999, The Bluest Eye was
successfully banned from Baker High School
language arts program in Baker City, Oregon
after multiple complaints from parents about
the content of the book. The original source
of contention for this novel was the rape
scene between Cholly and Pecola.
+ By George Orwell. Why it was
banned: George Orwell's 1984 has
repeatedly been banned and challenged in
the past for its social and political themes, as
well as for sexual content. Additionally, in
1981, the book was challenged in Jackson
County, Florida, for being pro-communism.
+ Animal Farm, The American Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded a cartoon
version in 1955. Because of its illegality,
many in Soviet-controlled territory first read it
in pirated, 'samizdat' form. In 2002, the novel
was banned in schools in the United Arab
Emeritas.

8. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
From Where the Sidewalk Ends to Falling Up to A
Shel Silverstein’s books were filled with eccentric
quirky, rhyming poetry that made readers of all
parents in Wisconsin weren’t laughing when they
poems in A Light in the Attic: “How Not to Have to
The poem goes like this:
Parents believed that this poem would make their
dishes so they wouldn’t have to dry them. The
criticism in Indiana where parents expressed
promoted “anti-parent material.”

9. The Dictionary
For a book that contains almost every known
English language, it’s no surprise that a few
some feathers. In 1976, schools in both
banned the American Heritage
contained inappropriate entries. One of these
word bed, “due to its use as a verb in slang.”
prisons in Michigan have banned dictionaries
Swahili. The spokesperson for the Michigan
Corrections explains that if the prisoners
obscure language,” they could then speak
other about prohibited activities.

10. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill
Martin Jr.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is a
children’s board book written to help toddlers make
objects and their meanings. On each page, the narrator
person what they see. They answer the question,
a red bird, a blue horse, a purple cat, a Goldfish, a
children, etc. You may be wondering, “What offensive
could possibly be in this book?” The answer lies not
with the author. According to the somewhat hilarious
Board of Education accidentally mistook Bill Martin Jr.,
300 innocent children’s books, for Bill Martin, the
Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. And
thus, the book was banned for a brief time until they
Martin Jr.’s only political agenda was “supporting
wonderful literature they love to read.”
VOLUNTEER

11. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
To many, Charlotte’s Web is a wholesome, classic
named Wilbur and his friendship with a spider
When Wilbur finds out that he is being raised for
decides to convince the farmer that Wilbur is a
order to save his life. Throughout the book,
of praise into her web such as “Radiant,” “Terrific,”
She ultimately saves Wilbur before her naturally
to an end. Due to themes of death and the fact that
characters are talking animals, a parent group in
ban the book from their students’ school
talking animals are “unnatural and blasphemous as
highest level of God’s creation.” However, the
impact the book’s popularity; in 2006, it had been
million times and been translated into 23

15. Notable
Court Cases
Related to
the Freedom
to Read
• Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v.
Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)Books Challenged: Down These Mean
Streets, The Naked Ape, Slaughterhouse Five, and others
• Counts v. Cedarville School District, 295 F.Supp.2d 996 (W.D. Ark.
2003)Book Challenged: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Sund v. City of Wichita Falls, Texas, 121 F. Supp. 2d 530 (N.D. Texas,
2000)Books Challenged: Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's
Roommate
• Case v. Unified School District No. 233, 908 F. Supp. 864 (D. Kan.
1995)Book Challenged: Annie On My Mind
• Minarcini v. Strongsville (Ohio) City School District, 541 F.2d 577 (6th
Cir. 1976)Books Challenged: Catch-22, God Bless You, Mr.
Rosewater, and Cat's Cradle
• Todd v. Rochester Community Schools, 41 Mich. App. 320 (1972)Book
Challenged: Slaughterhouse Five
• Rosenberg v. Board of Education, 196 Misc. 542 (1949)Books
Challenged: The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist
• Evans v. Selma Union High School District, 193 Cal. 54 (1924)Book
Challenged: The King James Bible
102 bills of concern nationally https://www.everylibrar

17. PEN America and Brooklyn Public Library are
teaming up to co-host the first-ever Freedom
to Read Advocacy Institute for the spring
2023 semester!

18. J.B. Pritzker
State of the State
+ There is a virulent strain of nationalism plaguing our nation, led by demagogues who are
pushing censorship, with a particular attack right now on school board members and
library trustees. It’s an ideological battle by the right wing, hiding behind a claim that they
would protect our children — but whose real intention is to marginalize people and ideas
they don’t like. This has been done in the past, and it doesn’t stop with just snuffing out
ideas.
+ This afternoon I’ve laid out a budget agenda that does everything possible to invest in the
education of our children. Yet it’s all meaningless if we become a nation that bans books
from school libraries about racism suffered by Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, and
tells kids they can’t talk about being gay, and signals to Black and Brown people and Asian
Americans and Jews and Muslims that our authentic stories can’t be told.
+ I’m the father of two children. I care a great deal about their education. Like every good
parent, I want to be involved in what they learn. I’m also a proud American. Our nation has
a great history, and much to be proud of. I want my children to learn that history. But I
don’t want them to be lied to. I want them to learn our true history, warts and all. Illinois’
young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world. I want them
to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our
nation has overcome, and thoughtful about what comes next.
+ Here in Illinois, we don’t hide from the truth, we embrace it.

19. + Chicago Public Library has declared itself a sanctuary for endangered
stories, establishing Book Sanctuaries across 77 distinct
neighborhoods and 81 library branches. Each Book Sanctuary will
provide opportunities to expand local access to banned or challenged
books. We invite book lovers across the country to do the same
at TheBookSanctuary.org.
+ What is a Book Sanctuary?
+ A Book Sanctuary can exist anywhere: in a library, a classroom, a
coffee shop, a public park or even a bedroom bookshelf. Most
importantly, Book Sanctuary owners provide unwavering support and
protection for the freedom to read. It's easy to start a Book Sanctuary.
You can:
• Collect and protect endangered books
• Make those books broadly accessible
• Host book talks and events to generate conversation,
including story times focused on diverse characters and
stories
• Educate others on the history of book banning and
burning

20. Brooklyn Public Library is adding our voice to
those fighting for the rights of teens nationwide
to read what they like, discover themselves, and
form their own opinions. Inspired by the
American Library Association's Freedom to
Read Statement, BPL's Books Unbanned
initiative is a response to an increasingly
coordinated and effective effort to remove books
tackling a wide range of topics from library
shelves.
The American Library Association reported 729
challenges to library, school and university
materials and services in 2021, resulting in
more than 1,597 individual book challenges or
removals. This represents the highest number of
attempted book bans since ALA began
compiling these lists 20 years ago. Most
targeted books were for a teen audience and
were by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons.
Educate Yourself!
Youth Censorship
Database: NCAC tracks
book challenges in schools
and libraries, as well as
censorship of art, journalism,
and other types of student
expression in schools.
Top 10 Most Challenged
Books: ALA's Office for
Intellectual Freedom
compiles an annual list of the
most challenged books.
Library Bill of Rights: ALA
affirms that all libraries are
forums for information and
ideas, and that these basic
policies should guide their
services.
BPL's Material Selection
Policy: Learn more about
how libraries like BPL make
decisions about what gets on
the shelves.

21. Start a Little Free Library

22. Maus has played a vital role in educating about the
Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal
experiences of victims and survivors. On the eve of
International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, it is more
important than ever for students to learn this history.
+ On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a
series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members
associated with an “un-German spirit.” Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of
books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann and Remarque, among many other well-
known intellectuals, scientists and cultural figures, many of whom were Jewish. The
largest of these book bonfires occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people
gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which
he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’
“right to clean up the debris of the past.”
+ The response to the book burnings was immediate and widespread. Counter
demonstrations took place in New York and other American cities, including
Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago. Journalists in the American and world press
expressed shock and dismay at these attacks on German intellectual freedom, and
various authors wrote in support of their assaulted German brethren. Artists, writers,
doctors, and other intellectuals fled Germany, prompted by the barbarity of the book
burnings and by continuing acts of Nazi persecution.