I come back to this. It seems Sarah Palin only asked if books could be banned from the Wasila Library.
Here are two sites worth checking on the issue of book banning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/speech/libraries/topic.aspx?topic=banned_books
I love books. The joke is that the only thing holding this house up is the books that line the walls.
A lovely man, Will, put in a sink for us this week, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when he said he could push out one wall and use space where the stairs are to make more book shelves. Imagine a place for more books! The walls are already lined, so he has opened a possibility for more books to be in ready reach.
I suffer when I read about book banning. A lovely independent book store near me had to close its doors when Borders went in. Everyone was crying when it closed, customers and employees. They had their display windows filled with books that had been banned in one place or another. The books are often classics, literature.
I was aware that Evangelicals have a list of books they want banned from libraries in schools. Halloween is a no-no, as is Judy Blume. I didn't realize though that list extended to adults. It seems clear that Sarah Palin wanted books banned in Wasilla. Book banning reminds me of Hitler and book burning. Book banning takes us where we don't want to go.
Palin is not a reader. I'm sure she came to the library in Wasilla with a prescribed list, from her church, of books that should be banned. Here is the list of books the Evangelicals and others don't want us to read. I look at it and am shocked. I don't think children who read are the ones who get pregnant at sixteen. They are opened to a world of the imagination and possibilities, fantasy and common sense. I feel sad that anyone would be deprived of access to these books. One of the things that has made this country great is access to public libraries. Where I live every little town has their library and they are all connected. I can walk into a library in one little community and check out a book and return it in another. Of course, all of the little communities where I live are bigger than Wasilla.
What I see now though as I look at this list is that where we are appalled, there are many who will support her "courage" in banning these books and that is what frightens me. What do we do if we are out-numbered? I can't imagine living in a country that bans books, and yet, if the McCain-Palin ticket is elected, that is what we may see.
This is a contested list of books, books that many, not just Sarah Palin, want banned. Imagine not being able to revel in The Canterbury Tales. Imagine if Bristol had access to The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman. This list is newer than 1996 when Palin was on her crusade to save the world. This list includes the Harry Potter books. We all know children who became enthused about reading through the Harry Potter books. How dangerous is that! I keep reading that we must not underestimate Sarah Palin, and that is becoming more and more clear. She represents a group that is powerful and we ignore them at our own peril. When I hear people chant her name, I am reminded of Hitler. We cannot worship our leaders, cannot project on them, especially when what they represent is the absence of choice and the banning of freedom and the stirring ingestion of thought.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth