I Love This Shit
The American Library Association, god love it, has released a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the ’90s. “Challenged” means parents and other concerned citizens got them pulled out of schools, public libraries, and like that.
As always, a list like this includes almost two dozen books that anyone who grew up reading for pleasure will remember fondly. And a handful of (nearly) undisputed classics.
The Chocolate War, for heaven’s sake? Huckelberry Finn? Of Mice & Men? If I had a grade-school aged kid reading these (and I was a grade-school aged kid when I read at least one or two of these), I’d be getting down on my knees to thank Allah, not getting them removed from the school library.
So far as I know there’s no documented proof of this (save perhaps for the book Language Police), but I believe the whittling down of books availible to schoolchildren is directly connected to the low literacy rate. If you take away all the books that might hold a child’s attention, why would they learn to read?
