Sarah Morgan
People who ban books are right up there with Michael Vick and Paris Hilton on my list. Possibly completely evil, definitely at least vacuous and troublesome.
So go enjoy being free and go read one. Go read a few, actually. Armfuls.
Out of the top 100, I’ve read maybe a quarter.
(I must digress to ask… who on earth would ban Where’s Waldo? [Unless you are sick of bratty 13-year-old Latin students riffing on your resemblance? …Three people will get that. Sorry.] Anyway.)
Some I read for school; thank goodness I didn’t have to fight bans to get them. Please, we read Madonna’s Sex in an undergrad comm classes; it wasn’t even the stuff I had to read in Human Sexuality. (…You don’t even want to know.)
I didn’t like some of them. Lord of the Flies creeped me out something fierce. I was way too young for Catcher in the Rye when I read it. Goosebumps were kind of crap, if I remember. But I got to choose them and read them and decide for my own self what I thought.
And some of them are some of my very favorite books ever.
You don’t love to read unless you love the stories that you’re reading, and you don’t love the stories that you’re reading unless you’re interested. Forgot where you were, forgot what time it was, didn’t hear people talking to you, didn’t notice the sun going down around you kind of interested. Anastasia; Tom and Huck; Harry; Jesse and Leslie; Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace – totally sucked in to their lives and what they’re going through and there with them.
Ban that? Why learn to read in the first place?
The fact that this
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
and it’s companion for boys are both on there is just DISGUSTING.
On the other hand, I just donated to DC to help a class buy copies of A Light In The Attic, which is also on there, so I think I’ve done my battle with banned books for now :)
I agree with you 2000% on the banning of books.
People read what they like.
When i was a kid I was lucky to have my mom and the good woemn on the Denville libraary help me find stuff I liked. The kind of books that make you forget to wash your hair.
I ordered a few today because of your suggestion including two picture books – one about gay penguins and “Little Black Sambo” which was one of my favorite books as a child and one of the few things I have in common with some of my coworkers from the Middle East.
PS – i wonder how that sweet Latin teacher is now. I keep waiting for him to be on Jeporady.