Last week the American Library
Association changed its Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to something else due to
suddenly discovering that Ingalls’ books did not represent their core
values. The books were published in the
1930’s and 40’s so I am not quite sure why they only now have discovered
something inappropriate (to them) in these books on Ingalls’ personal family
experiences.
It is ridiculous really. Below I send some links which outline the
stories so called inappropriateness. I
am not alone in finding this particular case especially annoying, even
outrageous.
I have googled various banned and
censored book lists but found it so dysfunctional and mind blogging to realize
how absolutely unreasonable some people are that I felt my best course is to
ask readers, if they are interested in pursuing this, to do their own looking.
Which now leads me to the main
purpose of this article. Questioning
people’s common sense in their assessment of what one ought to do about a book
that is objectionable to them. To my
mind, if you don’t like the book, stop reading it. It’s not your business to stop other people
from reading it by getting the book banned from their public library. We are adults, we ought to know what is good
reading and what is questionable. We all have our own standards and we don’t
need Mrs. Smith to tell us what we are allowed to read. Furthermore we are (generally speaking) quite
capable of recognizing inappropriate words or themes but sometimes, just maybe,
that is the whole point of the book.
One community banned “Charlotte’s
Web” because the animals were talking.
Are you seriously upset about a children’s book where animals talk? Is your little Susie so stupid she doesn’t
understand fantasy? And yet I bet you
let her watch “The Simpsons” because it is so alright to listen to that
family. That community would probably
have a heart attack if they read “Animal Farm”; in fact they would die before
they got through the first chapter.
Heaven help them if they got to the final chapter. They would likely ban glue from their schools
and make sure every child ate a lot of ham sandwiches. J
I have trouble with censorship and
I have even more trouble with society flipping out about things that actually
happened in history and somehow trying to make out like it wasn’t real. There are plenty of events that get altered,
ignored or are tiptoed around in history.
I have to give my Grade 11 history teacher credit for having her
students’ enact the Louis Riel trial with a very different outcome at the end
of it. Living in Winnipeg we were close
to where it all happened. Canada has its
share of rotten history but it is not taught very well (if at all) in schools. I know my younger siblings did not even learn about Louis Riel because they were mostly taught in
Alberta or Ontario. I wonder if
students in B.C. get a different version of history with respect to the
Japanese internment in WWII. Or
Italians in Toronto or Germans in Kitchener may get some other lessons that we
wouldn’t get.
Sadly Canada’s history is not
written in a very exciting way so we yawn our way through our courses and then
we miss out on the inequities and outrage we ought to be experiencing. But later on we can find books that recount
the stories in a more honest way.
It’s not good censoring books –
that’s how we learn.
One day Disney is going to regret not having provided Donald Duck with trousers.
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