Banned Book Awareness Week is from September 27 through October 3, encouraging people to celebrate their right to read controversial ideas and formerly condemned texts. In honor of that noble cause, we’ve collected a list of eight books that were banned from American schools for reasons that are occasionally incomprehensible and often hilarious.
1. Where’s Waldo?
The picture book was banned from one Long Island school after an outraged mother spotted a single topless female sunbather in an extremely crowded beach scene.
2. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
In the ‘70s, police officers in 12 states took exception to this seemingly innocent children’s story. Law enforcement were offended by the portrayal of the story’s police force as pigs, despite the book’s rendering of every character as different animals (including donkeys).
3. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Recent additions to the definition database—which includes the clinically correct but not K-12 “age appropriate” description of “oral sex”—rendered this reference book inappropriate for use in California’s Menifee Union School District.
4. The Lorax
After one boy told his father—a local businessowner of a lumber supply company—that cutting down a tree was like taking someone’s home, this man claimed public school district was encouraging its students to “persecute” the local lumber industry that fueled the town’s economy. He went so far as to take out a newspaper ad to decry the book. (A direct quote: “Teachers...mock the timber industry, and some of our kids are being brainwashed. We've got to stop this crap right now!”)
5. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
One Texan school Board member insisted that this picture book be banned from classrooms—not due to its content, but because its author had also written Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Except, of course, he hadn’t, because the school Board member hadn’t actually looked up whether Bill Martin, children’s book writer, was the same person as Bill Martin, political activist.
6. Religiously Affiliated Texts
In an effort to curb unwanted literature distribution, Orange County Public Schools have banned all religiously affiliated pamphlets. This includes both the years-long tradition of making Bibles available to students from local missionaries, and the newer suggestion of Satanic-based coloring books.
7. Tarzan
Those stories of man-turned-beast-turned-man were deemed too suggestive for Downey Unified School District students back in 1961. Allegedly, one of the complaints mentioned that there was “no indication that Tarzan and his mate (Jane) were married.”
8. The Diary of a Young Girl
Most people had little issue with the original, censored version published in 1947. The later edition, called “The Diary of a Young Girl: Definitive Edition,” however, contains previously omitted passages that discussed Anne Frank’s growing sexual awareness, which some school districts found inappropriate for their students to read. (One board in Alabama rejected the book, too, but on the basis that the text was “a real downer.”)
Additional ISM resources:
Research: A Research Study on Textbook Recycling in America: Recommendations for Proper Disposal and Repurposing at the End of a Textbook's Useful Life
Private School News Vol. 13 No. 6 2014 Summer Reading List for Private School Administrators
ISM Monthly Update for Division Heads Vol. 12 No. 8 8 Must-Have Student Resources for Writing and Researching
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
I&P Vol. 34 No. 5 Student Discipline, Policies, and Risks
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