Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Banned books -- good or bad?

As a librarian, intellectual freedom is a balancing act. Public libraries and schools have a duty and obligation to provide the widest amount of material for their communities, including digital information/technology, regardless of offending parents. What usually happens is that many librarians defy book selection to the parents or guardians instead of getting involved with banning books or book censorship.

The ALA (American Library Association) and other library organizations are often at the forefront of advocating intellectual freedom versus censorship. I wish they were stronger advocates for free or public domain online resources, but that's another issue.

Books can plant radical ideas into kids' heads or get them to think or question, which makes some parents uncomfortable. Book censorship has been an issue for hundreds of years; there's a number of websites and blogs relating to it. It's not going to end any time soon. It's only going to increase with the Internet.

If you're concerned about the content:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews - has a rating system for books. I can't say if it's good or not.

http://www.scholastic.com/bookwizard/ - gives reading level and description of some books

OR ask a librarian about the content.

As a parent, I try to vet the books before my eg/pg ds6 reads something. Lately, he's been reading Dahl books, some of which are dark and quite advanced for a 6-year-old, but I just want my son to enjoy reading period. I'm lucky that he's more interested in humor and rich visual imagery rather than that gory, scary stuff or something like The Girl with Dragon Tattoo.

Oftentimes books are banned by only a certain group or region, not everywhere, which brings up an interesting topic � how does one decide which books should be banned? Oftentimes the reason people want to ban books is for the book�s �inappropriate� content. Having said that, I think we need to create a greater emphasis on parents protecting their children from books deemed inappropriate � not banning books for all people. I believe that instead of trying to enforce books as evil, society needs to adopt a �to each their own� attitude about book banning.
A German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine once said, �Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.� This is an important quote because banning books is similar to banning people�s imaginations and creativity. Without creativity it is impossible to live up to ones full potential. Some of the greatest books have been considered bad, or been banned, at one time or another. It has already been brought up that if we ban all of the books that offend people, there wouldn�t be any books left. Books can be very influential and I believe that it is important to give books that may be offensive or seen risky a chance.

Censorship is the action ignorance takes when confronted with freedom

Excellent summation.

I, personally, am appalled by censorship and regard the written word with a great deal of reverence regardless of my personal appreciation of the work (or lack thereof). But I respect that other parents want to control what their children are exposed to... as long as they don't remove things that they find objectionable on behalf of others, then I have no problem with that. Removing Huck Finn from a school library, however, is both rude and presumptuous in the extreme.

Banning anything* is probably 'bad' in my estimation. In case that wasn't clear.

* assuming that we are discussing materials in which fundamental safety and human rights were not being violated for the purpose of producing the work, I mean. So yes, child pornography is not "protected" here in my mind for that reason, nor is the portrayal of animal abuse or acts of terrorism staged for the production of the work in question.