Top Ten “Challenged” Books of 2000
1. Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, for occult/Satanism and anti-family themes
2. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier for offensive language, violence, and being unsuited to age group
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for sexual content and being unsuited to age group
4. Killing Mr. Griffin, by Lois Duncan, for violence and sexual content
5. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck for using offensive language, racism, violence and being unsuited to age group
6. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, for being too explicit in the book’s portrayal of rape and other sexual abuse
7. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers for offensive language, racism, violence, and being unsuited to age group
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz, for violence, being unsuited to age groups and occult theme
9. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney, for violence, being unsuited to age group and occult themes
10. The Giver by Lois Lowry, for being sexually explicit, occult themes and violence

This month our public libraries, joined by the American Booksellers Association, are once again promoting “Banned Books Week.” As this appellation suggests, “Banned Books Week” exists to make us aware of censorship and book banning in the United States.

There are several things wrong with this picture.

First, according to the website of the American Library Association, no books were actually banned in 2000. Instead, the site tells visitors that a book listed on the banned books website does not actually have to be banned. The book has only to be “challenged.” Let’s say that a mother is worried by her seventh grader’s access to the novel Hannibal and its horrible concluding imagery. The mother protests that access to the public library, then the library reports “challenged book.” Although the book was never removed from the shelf, the request to restrict its use is enough to gain it “challenged” book status.

Once I was at the front desk of the Haywood County Public Library when a young lady returned the novel Hannibal. Visibly upset, probably by the prospect of calling attention to herself in public, the young lady told the library assistants that she had picked the book off the shelves the previous week, that the ending of the book had upset her, and that she wished the library would somehow label the book as inappropriate for young people. The library assistants met her request with a sort of baffled silence, but I later thought to myself, “Is that a challenge? Is the young lady’s distress and subsequent request an attempt to restrict free and easy access to a book?” I think not.

A second and primary problem with “banned books week” is that we only hear about the books that are challenged, usually from an elementary or a secondary school. Huckleberry Finn and Catcher In The Rye frequently make the list. Of the top 10 challenged books for 2000, all were challenged within a school setting. Harry Potter books lead the list. Also included on the list are such books as I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Fallen Angels, and The Giver. All of the books on the top 10 list are used in classrooms — many are used in North Carolina schools. As may be seen in the sidebar, these were challenged for being sexually explicit, violent or given to the use of occult themes (It is odd that occult books are acceptable in schools where religious books are generally avoided).

Can we contend with a straight face that a parent protesting her child’s required reading of the terrible rape scene in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is thereby attempting to ban the book? Would we not be distressed if the students in the same classroom watched “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” during school hours? It is true that the former comes closer to our perception of “art” than the latter. What is also true, however, is that in any other circumstance we would applaud the parent who oversees what goes into her child’s mind. (I am constantly astounded to hear some parents say that it doesn’t matter what their child reads as long as she is reading. Can we infer that it doesn’t matter what a child eats as long as she is eating?)

Labelling books as “banned” or “challenged” because parents are upset by what their children are forced to read in school is ludicrous. Since nearly all of the challenged books were school books and since there were apparently no actual banned books in 2000, we might legitimately conclude that book banning really doesn’t exist in the United States, that the guardians against censorship have done a bang-up job.
We would be wrong to draw that conclusion. There are evidently some books that have little chance of making an appearance in the public library or in many bookstores. Spence Publishing, which specializes in highbrow conservative books on political and social issues, recently issued a report showing how some state university bookstores and public libraries had reacted to the catalog which Spence had mailed to them. The manager of a state university bookstore wrote to Spence saying

“I wish to be REMOVED from your mailing list. I find some of your titles offensive and outright simple minded (sic). I will not sell your titles in any of my stores so please do not promote the ridiculous books to me!”

A Berkeley, California, bookstore wrote:

“Please take me off your mailing list. We do NOT sell fascist publications. Thank you.”

A public library in Connecticut also ordered Spence not to send its catalog because of the authors’ points of view.

Here we may differentiate between bookstores and public institutions like libraries or university bookstores. Bookstores that carry only a certain type of political book are perfectly free to do so, but the owners and managers of that store should not then prattle on about banned books. With the possible exception of the superstores, all independent bookshops ban books by selection anyway. The owner of an independent store will select those books for his stock which attract his or her interest or arouse his or her sympathy. In our own store, for example, we do not carry craft books because we are largely ignorant about craft books, have no interest in finding out about craft books, and are short on shelf space. We have, in effect, banned craft books from our store by selection.

Libraries, which as public institutions have a greater responsibility to the public, also “ban” books in various ways. Since community libraries can carry only a limited number of books, librarians must necessarily select some books and eliminate others. Because of the sheer number of annual publications, librarians also cannot be expected to peruse every publisher’s catalogue that crosses the desk.

Libraries must also worry about keeping circulation levels high to justify their continued funding. Such fiscal concern creates a natural pressure to carry books that guarantee a high circulation as opposed to books that will attract far fewer patrons. Some local libraries in Western North Carolina, for example, seem to carry fewer and fewer classics, yet offer hundreds of videos which, although easily obtainable at a dollar per rental in video stores, will greatly boost circulation figures.

On the other hand, maybe librarians do engage in censorship. Certainly a Bill Clinton Democrat might be reluctant to select books attacking the former president as opposed to those supporting him. A gay librarian may be reluctant to order a book adverse to the homosexual lifestyle. A librarian who is annoyed by politics in general may put her funds into art books.

Whatever the reason, whether censorship is deliberate or not, a quick inquiry may lead us to discover that some books and publishers are difficult to find in our public institutions. Books from the aforementioned Spence Publishing, for example, will rarely be found on our library shelves. With the exception of its fiction, Ignatius Press, an enormous success story among Catholic publishers in the last 10 years, places few books in local libraries, though there are usually half dozen books from secular publishers attacking different popes and the Catholic Church. Important books which are critical of communism — The Black Book Of Communism, the novel The Red Horse — are often missing from our library shelves. Are these types of books missing because they are overlooked by our librarians? Or are their authors and their messages deliberately ignored? Are they in effect banned?

We cannot say one way or the other with any degree of certainty (although moments like this one always make me think of Junior on the old Hee Haw show, who said: “I don’t know much, but I suspect a lot of things.”) What we can say with certainty is that there really are no “banned” books in the United States these days. There are merely those books that are easy to obtain versus those books that are more difficult to obtain.

If you wish to determine whether your library is carrying books that are out of the mainstream, take the list below as your starting place. Carry it to the library and see what’s there:

° Any non-fiction book by C.S. Lewis
° Any book by a great modern Christian apologist, Peter Kreeft
° Americans No More, Georgie Geyer’s critique of the meaning of American citizenship
° Any books by the seminal conservative thinker Russell Kirk
° Any books by philosopher Richard Weaver. Weaver, one of the most important American philosophers of the 20th century and a man who spent many years of his life in Weaverville, N.C., is nearly unknown in our region.
° Any books on homeschooling. North Carolina has an enormous homeschool population, yet many of our public libraries carry only a few books on how to homeschool.
° Any book by David Horowitz, a leader of the New Left in the 1960s who now writes books and articles critical of the Left.
° Any books by Michael Andrew Grissom, who writes books about the antebellum South from a Southern point of view.

(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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