Banned Books Week - Let Others Think for Themselves ....

The practice of banning books is not new.

In Ireland in 1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was banned for ‘wickedness.’

This year Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? (illustrated by Eric Carle) was briefly challenged, in the mistaken belief that the author had also written an adult book, Ethical Marxism.

On the ALA website is a list of the “ten most far-fetched (silliest, irrational, illogical) reasons to ban a book.” Number six pertains to Trina Schart Hyman’s Caldecott Honor Book, Little Red Riding Hood, which was challenged in 1984 due to a bottle of wine (illustrated on the cover, sticking out of Little Red’s basket) -- “which condones the use of alcohol.”

 Dictionaries have been banned.

So has the Diary of Anne Frank.

And Charlotte’s Web.