What are your thoughts on the "Banned Books" feed that has been circulating on Facebook?

Banned Books Week is an event organzied by the American Library Association – when they are not too busy shelving books. It doesn’t just mean books that have been banned by the US government; it means books that have been taken off of library shelves because of patron or parents or school board complaints.

But isn’t that their business?

Actually, librarians feel it is their duty to provide books that the majority of their readers want access to and feel they have made professional choices based on their expertise. If parents don’t want their kids reading certain books, they don’t need to allow them to take those books out. Simiarly, fi adults don’t want to read certain books, they don’t need to take them out either.

Any book that has been banned is almost certainly worth reading.

Well, all the books on this supposed list are absolute classics that I’d want my kids to read. Huck Finn, Grapes of Wrath, stuff like that.

I’d send my kids to Dillons to rent movies. If they tried to check out an R rated movie, the clerk would call to get my ok. :) I okay’d about half of them.

Banning books is worse than merely a waste of time. It’s downright stupid, and regressive, particularly when it comes to kids. Anything that a kid is curious enough to want to read should be put in front of him or her with dispatch. A couple of years ago, I was at a party where a woman was worrying about her 14 year old son’s lack of any interest in reading. A man that knew the family commented that the situation was strange, because the family had a huge library of books on religious topics. When I suggested that she get the kid a subscription to “Playboy”, the temperature in the room dropped 30 degrees. When my kids were coming up, I declared I would buy them any book they wanted to read. True to form, both the boy and girl immediately set out to bankrupt me with comic book subscriptions. The boy was 16 before it dawned on him that he could get Playboy and Penthouse for nothing, and the girl was extorting money for textbooks through graduate school. My son made the mistake of telling his 2 boys the story of the “promise”, and my daughter in law threatened him with death on the spot.

Well, I disagree with you. A friend’s 6 year old daughter was molested at a doctor’s office by the doctor’s son, who was 14. An investigation turned up the fact that the doctor had a monthly subscription to Playboy and to Penthouse. The investigator’s figured that contributed to the molestation.
I wouldn’t suggest giving a kid, whose hormones are raging, unlimited access to porn. That kind of thing, at that age, helps determine a kid’s attitude towards women and sex. Then you wind up with questions on Fluther like, “What do I do when I’m being sexually harassed in public?”