In the poem How Not To Have To Dry The Dishes,Shel Silverstein writes, “If you have to dry the dishes
and you drop one on the floor, maybe they won’t let you dry the dishes anymore.”

I read this poem from the children’s book A Light in The Attic to my young daughter some years ago. But, had the edu-Nazis on the board of education at an elementary school in Beloit, Wisconsin had their way, the book would have been banned from the library. The reason? It encouraged children to break dishes.

I don’t recall my daughter’s reaction to the poem, but I’m sure she knew if she broke a dish to get out of doing dishes, she would have had to do the chore over and over again until she got it right, and if she continued to break dishes there would have been consequences.

Thank you, Shel Silverstein, for giving me the opportunity to teach.

Banned Books week was last week and Silverstein’s work, as well as many classic books, made the news again.

Today, censorship tends to revolve around restricting age-appropriate materials to teens and young children, says Georgiana Huizenga, librarian at the Harris-Elmore Library. Books currently under fire include Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson’s And Tango Makes Three, a story about two male penguins who adopt an abandoned egg, John Green’s Looking for Alaska, a story that deals with teen suicide, and Stephanie Meyer’s The Twilight Series, criticized for explicit sexuality and controversial religious viewpoints.

Huizenga put these books on a display of banned books and led an adult discussion group about Looking for Alaska. Her goal, as well as that of the American Library Association, is to defend your freedom to read.

“You should monitor what your children read, but I don’t feel I have the right to tell somebody else what their children should or should not read,” she explains.

The Harris-Elmore reading public agrees with her. She says she has fielded only one complaint in 18 years. That was for a book entitled It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health by Robie Harris. However in 2009, the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom processed 460 challenges from citizens and groups wanting a book banned.

In the decade from 1990 to 2000, more than 6,000 challenges were filed. Here are some of the books challenged or banned: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown; Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; 1984 by George Orwell; and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

I’ve read these books and I have a better understanding of the human race, history and the potential dangers of an intrusive, powerful government. It is these ideas that have stayed with me, rather than any sexual, vulgar or violent scene. Although, reading about U.S. soldiers shooting unarmed fleeing Indians in the back along the gully at Wounded Knee is an image that will never leave me.

Common arguments for censorship usually cite excessive violence, explicit sex or profanity. But, they also include witchcraft, homosexuality, secular humanism, rebel children and politically incorrect language.

More disturbing are the reasons used to challenge these books: The Things They Carried for its disrespect for authority; To Kill a Mockingbird for its portrayal of racism; Huckleberry Finn for its use of the N-word; The Naked Ape for its look at human evolution and Slaughterhouse Five because it showed America’s firebombing of Dresden during World War II.

Criticism of government and our institutions is vital to the health of our nation. It is embarrassing, painful, thought provoking and sometimes dangerous, but change seldom happens without it. Librarians are on the front line in the battle to defend your right to read such criticism. They don’t choose books for circulation based on their religious, political or moral beliefs. They choose books to make a wide variety of ideas and knowledge available for you to choose for you and your children. Banned Books week is a good time to remember that.

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