“Censorship attempts jumped by 20 percent during the last school year,” proclaimed a recent news release by Norman Lear’s People for the American Way. PAW’s annual report, called “Attacks on the Freedom to Learn,” listed and described the details of the 153 alleged “censorship attempts” during the 1986-87 school year.
The PAW blast was fired with its usual elaborate public relations skill and media gimmickry. But this year, the professionally prepared attack on censorship didn’t seem to rate network or wire service coverage; only a few local outlets bothered to notice.
It’s no wonder that the media greeted the news release with a massive “ho hum.” The whole thing is, to borrow a famous phrase, “much ado about nothing.” A reading of the 75-page booklet that supposedly documented the PAW news release shows that there is far less here than meets the eye.
Even if those 153 were important books, they would be just a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of books used in schools across the nation. But when we read the list of censored books, it becomes evident that most of the books aren’t worth defending anyway. Except for the few important titles you can count on one hand, the list is made up of unimportant, unmemorable books.
Here are the 153 titles listed by People for the American Way: “About David; Adolescents Today; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Angel Dust Blues; The Amazing Bone; Anastasia Krupnik; P and Stuff (play); An Indecent Obsession; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; As I Lay Dying; The Bachman Books; Banner in the Sky (film); The Beatles: An Illustrated Record; Bloods: An Oral History of Vietnam; Blubber; Bony Legs; The Boy and the Devil; Breakfast of Champions; Br’er Rabbit’s Big Secret (play); Bridge to Terabithia; The Butterfly Revolution; Carrie; The Catcher in the Rye; Chocolate to Morphine, Understanding Mind-Active Drugs; The Chocolate War; Christine; The Color Purple; Composition and Applied Grammar: The Writing Process; The Confessions of Nat Turner; The Crucible; Cujo; Curses; Hexes and Spells; The Dead Zone; The Death of Arthur; Death of a Salesman; The Devil’s Storybook; The Diary of Anne Frank; Different Seasons; Discovery; Doktor Bey’s Suicide Guidebook; Don and Donna Go to Bat; Duffy and the Devil; Early Disorder; The Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge; Encyclopedia of Psycho-Active Drugs; Family Matters: Concepts in Marriage and Personal Development; Finding My Way; Flowers for Algernon; Forever; The Fragile Flag; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (play); The Gettysburg Address; Ghostbusters (film); Go Ask Alice; The Grapes of Wrath; Grendel; Happy Endings Are All Alike; The Headless Cupid (novel/film); Holt, Rinehart and Winston reading series; I Am the Cheese; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Impressions reading series; Jaws; Judevine (play); Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Let’s Talk About Health; Life and Health; A Light in the Attic; Little Big Man; Lord of the Flies; The Lottery (film); Lysistrata; Macbeth; Male and Female Under Eighteen; Manchild in the Promised Land; Man, Myth and Magic Series; The Martian Chronicles; The Miller’s Tale; Monsters and Other Science Mysteries; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic; Never Cry Wolf; Night Shift; Nine Stories; 100 Years of Solitude; 100 Ways to Enhance Self-Concept in the Classroom; Ordinary People; The Outsiders; Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on My Eyeball; People (magazine); Pet Sematary; The Pigman; The Popular History of Witchcraft; Rabbit Run; Rainbow Jordan; Red Sky at Morning; Reflections (student literary magazine); Remember Me When This You See; The Right Stuff; Running Loose; Run, Shelley, Run!; Salem’s Lot; Sex Drugs & AIDS (film); Siddhartha; Slaughterhouse-Five; Snowbound; Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales; Sports Illustrated (magazine); Stories of the Occult (booklet); The Supernatural Reader; The Sword and the Sorcerer (film); That Was Then, This Is Now; Then Again Maybe I Won’t; Think About It, You Might Learn Something; Tiny Tim; The Trouble with Soap; Unicorns in the Rain; Values Clarification; Vision Quest; What’s Happening to My Body for Boys; What’s Happening to My Body for Girls; When the Sky Began to Roar; Where the Sidewalk Ends; Witches; Witches Get Everything; A Woman’s Body: An Owner’s Manual; You and Your Health; You Can Say No.”
Except for a few classics such as Macbeth, the Gettysburg Address, and Huckleberry Finn, students would be better served if the school personnel exercised better judgment and made more important selections from among the thousands of great books which should be read by educated persons.
