Banned Beauty

Just when you thought you'd heard it all.

I thought I'd end Banned Books Week with the 10 (plus my two) most farfetched (silliest, irrational, illogical) reasons to ban a book according to the American Library Association. 

1. “Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” (A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien) 
   
2. “It caused a wave of rapes.” (Arabian Nights, or Thousand and One Nights, anonymous)
   
3. “If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown)
   
4. “Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane.” (Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
   
5. “It is a real ‘downer.’” (Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank)
   
6. “The basket carried by Little Red Riding Hood contained a bottle of wine, which condones the use of alcohol.” (Little Red Riding Hood, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm K. Grimm)
   
7. “One bunny is white and the other is black and this ‘brainwashes’ readers into accepting miscegenation.” (The Rabbit’s Wedding, by Garth Williams)
   
8. “It is a religious book and public funds should not be used to purchase religious books.” (Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, by Walter A. Elwell, ed.)
   
9. “A female dog is called a bitch.” (My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara)
   
10. “An unofficial version of the story of Noah’s Ark will confuse children.” (Many Waters, by Madeleine C. L’Engle)

And my two additions?

1. Black Beauty, by Mary Sewell, was banned in 1965 (without being read) in South Africa by the Publications Control Board, as "its title seemed to suggest beauty existed outside the white race, and was therefore deemed offensive."
   
2. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was banned in Texas in 2010 because the author Bill Martin Jr., happened to have the same name as an obscure Marxist theorist, and no one bothered to check if it was the same person.

Sigh.

I'm gonna go read....