http://www.scatteredthoughts.org/photoblogSarah Palin tried to ban books from the Wasilla, Alaska public library. Only ignorant people want to ban books. Sarah Palin is ignorant. Book banners like Palin assume adult readers do not have the intelligence to decide what they want to read, or to select the appropriate books for their children.
I received a list of books that are said to be those Palin wanted banned. However, it includes books that were not published around 1996 when Sarah Palin tried to ban certain books i.e. the Harry Potter series). The minutes of the Wasilla Library board does not include a list. I will continue to research this issue with the hope of coming up with a list that can be validated.
The larger issue here is not which books Sarah Palin wanted to ban. It is the principle of banning books. It was abhorrent when she tried it, and I cannot imagine her being elected to the Vice Presidency. Her views on freedom to read what one wishes needs to publicized widely among teachers, librarians, and ordinary people. A book banner is a book burner.
Republicans have a habit of attacking Democrats because they accuse them of wanting to create a "Big Brother" government with lots of intrustion into the private lives of citizens. Sarah Palin asserts that she wants smaller government, however her actions suggested otherwise. As mayor of 8,000 inhabitant Wasilla, Alaska, Palin sought to impose the full weight of her teeny weeny government onto librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. Fortunately, Mary Ellen Baker, the librarian refused to do so. She resigned as Library Director in 1999.
Below is a contested list of books.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth
PO Box 751772
650 Charles E. Young Dr. South
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772
(310) 206=6322
hilberma@ucla.edu
www.ph.ucla.edu/hs
You are correct not to trust the list and to say that the truly egregious problem is Palin's desire to ban books at all. The list is taken, I think, from the Intellectual Freedom Committee (American Library Association) list of most often banned books. Some of them are books conservatives have no desire to ban (e.g., Huck Finn) but have been banned by folks of a more liberal bent, and usually for sympathetic reasons (not wanting people to hear the "N" word and so on).
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