“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” — Mark Twain
Lately there has been a lot in the news about groups trying to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes from school libraries. And those attempts seem to have sparked censorship efforts by groups wanting to ban or censor books containing other material they disagree with.
That includes kids books. Again. This time it’s the children’s novels of Roald Dahl that are in the crosshairs. Critics of the books say they contain words that were in common usage a few decades ago (descriptor words like “fat” and the color black) that might somehow corrupt the youth of today.
Censorship is not a new thing, of course, it’s been around since at least 443 B.C., when elected officials in Rome’s census office were also tasked with overseeing public morals.
Later, one practitioner of censorship was Thomas Bowdler, who in 1812 published an edition of Shakespeare that omitted the scenes he considered unsuitable, and whose name gives us the word “bowdlerize.”
Dahl’s children’s books are just the latest to be targeted for censorship, following in the footsteps of several other well-known kids’ offerings. For instance, the entire “Captain Underpants” series by Dav Pilkey was challenged for encouraging “disruptive behavior,” while Shel Silverstein’s 1964 book “The Giving Tree” was once banned from a Colorado library “because it was sexist.”
Even books by Dr. Seuss have come under scrutiny, such as the time a parent who owned a logging company tried to get “The Lorax” banned from a school library “because it was anti-logging,” while “Hop on Pop” was accused of “encouraging children to use violence against their fathers.”
But it’s not just kids’ books that are in the sights of the banners and bowdlerizers. Perennial targets have included such modern classics as 1969’s “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, which is based on the infamous firebombing of Dresden that he witnessed as an American prisoner of war. Despite becoming an instant bestseller, the book was banned and censored by some libraries and schools for its “content and language.”
“Do you realize,” Vonnegut explains, “that all great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?”
And Ray Bradbury’s 1953 classic, “Fahrenheit 451” (which is supposedly the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns), also took some heat. In the futuristic novel, “firemen” go around burning books that have been outlawed. One parent wanted the book banned because of “profanity and using God’s name in vain.”
“There is more than one way to burn a book,” cautioned Bradbury later. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Of course there are others. Lots of others. For example, George Orwell’s 1945 classic “Animal Farm” was accused of being “Communist propaganda and a seditious call to overthrow organized states.”
“Of Mice and Men,” John Steinbeck’s 1937 Depression-era tale, was threatened with banishment because it “contained racist stereotypes and slurs.”
Harper Lee’s 1960 bestseller “To Kill a Mockingbird” was challenged by the Biloxi, Mississippi, School Board because its strong language, discussion of rape and use of the n-word “make people uncomfortable.”
But the world is not a comfortable place. “Books that the world calls immoral,” observed Oscar Wilde, “are books that show the world its own shame.”
Or, as Dwight Eisenhower put it, “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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