Banned Books

Should parents or other adults be able to ban books from schools and libraries?

Books should always be age appropriate, so if that means that a book that's about sex should not be on the library shelf for kids under 12, then I'm all for that type of ban.

Libraries and especially schools should be the professionals when evaluating what is age appropriate.

I wonder how our library deals with with small kids trying to take unsuitable material? Movies and games probably have clear system, but are books and comics really rated in their database?
In the least I have to say that kids can grab anything from the shelf and sit down to read it there, I'm sure the couple librarians can't keep an eye on that. And we do have some colorful European comics there...

no book should ever be banned

Beaky wrote:

no  book  should ever be banned

Well, there are such things as slander, fraud, violation of privacy...

If I recall, I was 11 or 12 when I started reading things like Ray Bradbury, Steven King, C.S. Lewis, etc. Some of the Bradbury stuff wasn't really kid-friendly (think 'Farenheit 451')

Around 13 or 14 I read Catcher In The Rye, Animal Farm was regular reading in middle school, etc. - and these were interesting to me. I got lost in books and they spurred my imagination. I don't know if Animal Farm or Catcher would be available to me today as a middle-schooler, and that's sad compared to things that do make the grade. I'm not going to jump into that debate - not my point here - but if one is acceptable then allow the conversations between parents and children to be had about what's appropriate

I never read anything more questionable than Agatha Christie, starting 11 or 12.
As a detail, my school library (at 13-19) did have "And Then There Were None", which still back in 90's Finland used the, ahem, original title of the book... (Arguably the Finnish form of the N-word is a step milder, but does sound pretty bad today.)

Jazzy wrote:

Should parents or other adults be able to ban books from schools and libraries?

Schools yes. You don't want your 6 year old to go read Mein Kampf. Libraries don't know. If it were up to me they'd ban all filth for everyone, but it's not North Korea here and if the majority wants it, you can't force em to burn it. Burn your own books LOL or those from your partner. My dad had a book in his bookcase for ages. I don't think he read it, but it was there. Kaballah. My mom just threw it in the bin when he didn't look and he never even noticed.

I've made a point to go out and find several "banned books", such as Hitler's diatribe and even Martin Luther's "Jews and their Lies".

Some books should be banned from the lower grades, perhaps even through high school, until the students have enough background and experience to understand what they are reading and why it was written, and why such things need to be preserved.

So it never happens again..... which may explain why we are on the verge of seeing it again.

DrLeftover wrote:

I've made a point to go out and find several "banned books", such as Hitler's diatribe and even Martin Luther's "Jews and their Lies".

Some books should be banned from the lower grades, perhaps even through high school, until the students have enough background and experience to understand what they are reading and why it was written, and why such things need to be preserved.

So it never happens again..... which may explain why we are on the verge of seeing it again.

Maybe. I rather read Corrie ten Boom or listen to others from the good side. Her sister always shut the radio off when he started to scream. One guy now believes Nazi propaganda from that time and Neo Nazi's also read that stuff, but they'll hate anyway if you ban the book or not.