censorship in literature essay

A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘The Prevention of Literature’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Prevention of Literature’ is perhaps George Orwell’s most famous essay defending freedom of expression. Published in January 1946 in Polemic , the essay sees Orwell calling upon intellectuals of all backgrounds and disciplines to stand up against literary censorship of various kinds.

You can read ‘The Prevention of Literature’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis below.

‘The Prevention of Literature’: summary

George Orwell begins ‘The Prevention of Literature’ by recounting his experience at a meeting of the PEN club (an international association of writers) on the occasion of the three-hundred-year anniversary of John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644), one of the most famous defences of freedom of the press in all of English literature.

Orwell observes that none of the speakers quoted from Milton’s polemic, and none of them seemed prepared to declare that they were against literary censorship.

Orwell uses the rest of ‘The Prevention of Literature’ to discuss the current climate of the mid-1940s, arguing that there are two main threats to intellectual freedom: bureaucracy and big business on the one hand, and advocates for totalitarianism on the other.

‘Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity’, he argues, ‘finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution.’ A writer can only be intellectually honest if they are free to express their own subjective opinions, but such freedom is under threat.

So even in Britain, as contrasted with somewhere like the Soviet Union (which was then a Communist dictatorship ruled by Joseph Stalin), intellectuals – especially writers and journalists – endure a more subtle kind of censorship created by the publication market and by influential intellectuals: ‘The independence of the writer and the artist is eaten away by vague economic forces, and at the same time it is undermined by those who should be its defenders.’

Orwell points out that a shift has taken place in the last fifteen years or so, since the early 1930s: whereas intellectual freedom previously had to be defended against Catholics, Conservatives, and Fascists, now the main threat is from supporters of Communism. He also observes that a totalitarian state is rather similar to a theocracy, or religious state, because its leaders have to be seen as being ‘infallible’, like the Pope.

Orwell argues that poetry is slightly different from prose, in that a poet can more readily express themselves freely without being detected, since poetry’s meaning works differently from the meaning of prose.

Orwell concludes his essay by speculating on the future of fiction, especially as film and television gain more popularity and people spend less of their money on literature. And although Britain is still a liberal rather than totalitarian society, ‘To exercise your right of free speech you have to fight against economic pressure and against strong sections of public opinion’.

‘The Prevention of Literature’: analysis

In many ways, the main thrust of Orwell’s argument in ‘The Prevention of Literature’ might be summarised in one sentence from the essay:

To keep the matter in perspective, let me repeat what I said at the beginning of this essay: that in England the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all.

So, capitalism and red tape may prevent a writer from telling the truth, but the bigger long-term danger to freedom of expression is the perceived lack of appetite for it among intellectuals. Orwell cites the example of British scientists who shrug off the censorship of Russian writers, because they are not themselves Russian or writers. Orwell’s point, of course, is that it is dangerous to think of censorship as something that ‘only’ happens ‘over there’ or in some other discipline.

Orwell’s essay, like many of his other essays about literature written around this time (see his ‘ Politics vs Literature ’ for another notable example, in which even Gulliver’s Travels reveals something about totalitarian societies), is as much about totalitarianism as it is about the art of literature:

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

This ‘force or fraud’ must further degrade the art of good literature, if writers are coerced or pressured (if not actively forced) into expressing things which they know to be false, or avoiding things which they know to be true but which are deemed unspeakable by those in charge (including fellow intellectuals).

‘The Prevention of Literature’ has attracted criticism from some writers: at the time, the noted Communist poet Randall Swingler responded to Orwell’s essay, accusing him of ‘intellectual swashbucklery’. And certainly there are parts of Orwell’s argument which are less persuasive.

For instance, his suggestion that poets may be able to evade censorship in a totalitarian state because the poet can more readily express themselves freely without being detected, seems overly simplistic, as is his idea that, just because the old ballads are ‘authorless’, all modern poetry is similarly universal and free from political meaning.

It is hard to imagine a poet like W. H. Auden living in Stalinist Russia being able to evade the censors for long. Even leaving Britain for the US in 1938 was enough to make many British leftists abandon their former literary hero.

‘The Prevention of Literature’ remains an important discussion of the importance of writers not just of remaining ‘free’ from official censorship but also remaining free to express ideas and beliefs which they hold dear, even if they may prove unpopular or out of step with the majority of the population.

As Orwell puts it, ‘To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.’ But a climate of fear is created as soon as a writer feels that they cannot speak or write freely, for fear of going against the orthodoxy of the day.

1 thought on “A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘The Prevention of Literature’”

A pertinent post in the era of “cancel culture”. Perhaps Orwell was still smarting from the initial rejection of “Animal Farm” by T S Eliot, then at Faber & Faber, on the (I think) tactically sound grounds that it was not a good idea to alienate Stalin while WW2 was still ongoing.

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When Your Own Book Gets Caught Up in the Censorship Wars

By Robert Samuels

At first, the invitation seemed thrilling. In June, a staff member at Christian Brothers University, in Memphis, Tennessee, reached out to me and Toluse Olorunnipa, my former colleague at the Washington Post , with whom I wrote “ His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice .” Organizers had selected our book for its Memphis Reads program. During the fall, schools and churches across the city would host events that focussed on the themes of the book, which tells the story of how George Floyd ’s life and legacy were shaped by systemic racism.

The organizers arranged for Tolu and me to visit Memphis at the end of October. We would give talks at C.B.U. and Rhodes College, whose first-year students were assigned to read the book. The event that excited me most, though, was a visit to Whitehaven High School. Its hallways were filled with young, ambitious Black students, like Tolu and I once were. I imagined them underlining and circling certain passages, dissecting details in class discussions.

That didn’t happen. A few days before Tolu and I arrived in Memphis, we received an e-mail with new information about our visit to Whitehaven. We would be “unable to read from the book directly or distribute the book due to TN’s CRT/Age Appropriate Materials Law.” It appeared that our book had been banned.

In May, 2021, Tennessee became one of the first states in the country to impose legal limits on class discussions about racism and white privilege. The law, passed by the Republican-dominated legislature, prohibits schools from teaching fourteen concepts, including that any individual is “inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” and that “this state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.” Our book examines the lingering effects of racist policies after Emancipation , in the housing system, the health-care system, the criminal-justice system, and others. It also traces the country’s measured progress toward a more just society, and the enduring patriotism of some of America’s most subjugated citizens—though not enough, it seemed, to avoid getting ensnared in the culture wars.

Last year, Tennessee passed a second, even more subjective law that allowed community members to lodge a complaint if they thought a book in a school library was not age-appropriate. The school board would evaluate the book and determine whether to remove it from the library. It was difficult to imagine a parent at Whitehaven, a school composed almost entirely of Black students, in a neighborhood that has had to confront many of the systemic biases we wrote about, making such a complaint.

A few days after Memphis Reads sent the updated guidance, we got on a video call with Justin Brooks, who helps coördinate the program. He told us that Memphis-Shelby County Schools had concluded that the book violated the age-appropriate law. He wasn’t aware of any complaint from a parent; the school system had acted preëmptively. According to Brooks, representatives from M.S.C.S. insisted that we discuss “gentler topics.” We were told not to connect policies of the past with contemporary racial disparities and to avoid “anything systemic.” “You can’t really go into the weeds,” Brooks told us, which was hard to stomach. The main point of our book was to go deeper than the weeds, to the very roots of racial bias.

Not only were we barred from directly quoting the text, we couldn’t even hand out copies of family-friendly passages that recounted Floyd’s own high-school experiences. Brooks smiled throughout the conversation, but he was clearly exasperated. “We’re trying to work with it,” he said. The program had previously invited many authors who wrote “adult” books, including Dave Eggers, Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, and Tressie McMillan Cottom. Never before had something like this come up.

Tolu and I made a great reporting team because we have opposite demeanors. Tolu, the Post ’s White House bureau chief, is cerebral, understated, and graceful under pressure. I tend to be more expressive. I began to shake my head to ward off a burning sensation in my chest. Could we even attend this event? Would it be a subtle endorsement of censorship to do so? “Justin, this is heartbreaking,” I said.

After the call, Tolu summed it up best: How could you deny an American story to an American student? The students at Whitehaven were about the same age as Darnella Frazier was when she changed the world by recording and posting a cell-phone video of George Floyd’s brutal murder. They lived miles away from where Memphis police officers had beaten the life out of Tyre Nichols .

I knew how events like these could torment a Black teen-ager. In 1999, I was fourteen years old, living in the Bronx, when police officers killed Amadou Diallo, a young Black man who lived on the other side of the borough. Four members of the N.Y.P.D. were in an unmarked car, searching for a rape suspect, when they came across Diallo, who reached into a pocket to pull out his wallet. Police mistook the wallet for a gun and fired forty-one shots at him.

The officers were charged with second-degree murder; they were all acquitted. In my community, the details of the acquittal mattered less than the brutality of the facts. Innocent black man. Shot forty-one times. A simple misunderstanding that could get you killed. The Sunday after the verdict, my pastor called all the Black men in the congregation up to the altar and prayed for their safety. The church ladies handed out pamphlets about what to do if you were stopped by the police. My parents, like many others, warned me that being a Black man was like being an endangered species, that I had to be constantly aware of forces that might harm or even kill me. For a while, I was too afraid to even carry a wallet; I put my lunch money and my Metrocard directly into my pockets. That fear left me embarrassed, shy, angry. I couldn’t understand why, so many years after the civil-rights movement, the color of my skin could be so threatening.

I had once been told that the answer to anything could be found in a book. As a child, I had been introduced to many Black authors by my teachers; I loved the fairy tales of John Steptoe and was captivated by Mildred D. Taylor, whose Logan family wrestled with the racist past—and present—of the Deep South. I was in ninth grade, a student at Bronx Science, one of the best schools in the city, when Diallo was killed. During the next four years, I can’t recall reading anything more than a poem written by a Black person for class. I began to internalize the idea that stories about my community were not worth writing or reading about, that Black authors did not create sophisticated works of literature, certainly not the kind that had a fancy sticker on the cover. Reading “ The Scarlet Letter ” and “ Pride and Prejudice ,” especially in the wake of Diallo’s death, made me feel isolated and irrelevant.

One day, during my senior year, I was browsing an airport bookstore when I saw Stokely Carmichael’s autobiography, “ Ready for Revolution .” A whole chapter was devoted to Bronx Science, which he had also attended. I was riveted. It started with an officer hassling him on the street, only to be stunned when Carmichael shows him a book with the school’s logo. Although our time there was separated by four decades, we both had the same confusion upon discovering that white classmates had grown up reading an entirely different set of material (in his case, Marx’s “ Das Kapital ,” and, in mine, Cat Fancy magazine). We were both surprised by how little dancing there was at white classmates’ parties. “It was at first a mild culture shock, but I adapted,” he wrote. I, too, had to learn to adapt, to not be so self-conscious about getting stereotyped because of my speech, my clothes, my interests. It was the first time I had ever truly felt seen in a book that was not made for children.

When Tolu and I began to write “His Name Is George Floyd,” in April, 2021, I wanted our book to do for teen-age Black boys what Carmichael’s book had done for me. I hoped they could relate to Floyd’s ambition—first of becoming a Supreme Court Justice, then a pro athlete—and his constant worry that someone would perceive him as a threat. By describing the accretion of junk science about race differences and the history of use-of-force practices in police departments, I hoped that book would give readers a sense of how that pernicious stereotype proliferated. We even threw in some SAT words.

We also understood that the country’s appetite for talking about race was changing. Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, signed the law restricting how racism can be discussed in school on the first anniversary of Floyd’s death. We realized that we’d need to protect our work from being dismissed summarily. We tried to depict the scene of Floyd’s death dispassionately, to avoid being accused of melodrama or exploitation. Some of our most vociferous debates were about quoting people using profanity and the N-word. In high school, I would have been put off by too much of that. “My virgin ears!” I’d tell Tolu, as we reconstructed the dialogue between Floyd and the friends from his neighborhood.

Sometimes, my friends would joke that the book would almost certainly face the wrath of the right wing, as if it were something to look forward to. They figured a polarized response would be good for publicity and sales. But that prediction upset me, and we worked hard to prevent it from happening. When the book did eventually win some fancy stickers—including a Pulitzer Prize—I hoped teachers would consider it worthy of being read in their classrooms.

We arrived at Whitehaven on a pleasant Thursday morning. The building was antiquated, all beiges and browns. Students milled around, wearing clear backpacks—a requirement to deter them from bringing weapons to campus. Near the school’s entrance was a big poster celebrating some of the most accomplished students, who had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in college scholarships. The hallways were lined with senior pictures of previous classes. The farther you walked into the school, the whiter those pictures got.

The school district where Floyd was educated, in Houston, had experienced a similar demographic shift. In the seventies and eighties, white families had fled for the suburbs and other areas, taking their tax dollars with them. The district struggled to find quality teachers and had trouble meeting new educational standards imposed by the state. As we were walking through Whitehaven, Jason Sharif, who had started a nonprofit to help revitalize the surrounding community, told us that the school hadn’t been able to update its science labs in decades. It, too, had to contend with state intervention if it did not meet certain academic standards. At our talk, these similarities were the kinds of connections we had been instructed not to make.

Students filed into the school’s auditorium, and they looked eager to see us. Maybe they were interested in what we had to say; maybe they were just happy to get out of class. I began to discuss how we reported the book. We told them about interviewing more than four hundred people, from Floyd’s friends and family to the President of the United States. I told them we had learned that Floyd was a man of many ambitions, but that he did not find much grace in the institutions that were supposed to help him succeed. There were holes in the social safety net, I said. And those holes were often there because of political choices that were designed to work against Black people. Then I stopped.

“We’re not going to speak for very long because we really want to get to your questions,” I told them. We had expected an open forum, but instead five students had been pre-selected to interview us. Their questions had been vetted and pre-written. The first student, a young woman in glasses who complimented me on my bubbly personality, looked at us and said, “Who was your audience for this book?”

I paused. Briefly, I considered using this an opening to talk about freedom of the press, feeling gagged by the school district, and the long history of denying Black people access to books and reading. (Hillery Thomas Stewart, Floyd’s great-great-grandfather, was a part of that history—he lost five hundred acres of land through tax schemes and paperwork he was told to sign but could not read.) Instead, I told them about my experience reading Carmichael’s book and how much it meant to me as a teen-ager. “I wrote this book for you,” I said.

When the event was over, Sharif announced that the book was available for free. (Penguin Random House had donated thirty-six copies.) Students’ hands shot up, but, because the book wasn’t allowed at the school, Sharif told them they would have to make their way to the mall, where his nonprofit was distributing them. We took a selfie with the students from the stage, after which I had hoped to discuss the restrictions with the assistant superintendent for the district’s high schools, who was in attendance. By the time we finished taking the photo, she was gone.

I had envisioned book bans as modern morality plays—white, straight parents and lawmakers trying to shield their children from the more complex realities portrayed in books by queer people or people of color. But what happened in Memphis wasn’t so simple. Almost everyone we interacted with from the district was Black. No one denied the existence of systemic racism. Their schools were among the first to pilot the A.P. African American studies course and, later this year, they plan to send students to the National Civil Rights Museum in eighth and eleventh grade.

The staff also had to make choices. They were operating in a state whose governor warned teachers to “not teach things that inherently divide or pit either Americans against Americans or people groups against people groups.” Defying that warning could mean losing your job.

Six days after our trip to Whitehaven, Cathryn Stout, the spokesperson for the school district, e-mailed Tolu and me “to apologize for the miscommunication and misinformation surrounding your recent visit.” A reporter from Chalkbeat had been asking questions about what had happened, and she insisted that something must have been garbled during the event planning. The district did not believe in controlling our speech, she claimed, nor would they have objected to us reading from the book.

Stout defended prohibiting the book itself, on the ground that it was not appropriate for people under the age of eighteen. She cited restrictions placed on hip-hop artists, such as Yo Gotti, who have spoken to students but aren’t permitted to perform their music. Gotti’s most famous song is about women sending him nudes; the comparison to our work made little sense. I asked what specifically made the book so inappropriate.

Stout then admitted that no one involved in the decision had actually read it. The district’s academic department didn’t have time, she said. A staff person in the office searched for it in a library database, noting that the American Library Association had classified it as adult literature. That was enough to make the call.

I described this rationale to Donna Seaman, the adult-books editor for Booklist , the A.L.A.’s publication for reviews. She told me the Memphis district’s reasoning seemed “bizarre.” According to her, the “adult books” classification is meant to indicate books of a certain level of sophistication—something not intentionally crafted for children or teen-agers. “This is not to say a sophisticated young person who is interested should not read the book,” Seaman told me. When I checked, many lodestars of the high-school curriculum—“ 1984 ,” “ The Grapes of Wrath ,” “ The Great Gatsby ,” “ Macbeth ”—were also deemed “adult.”

I told Stout that I was disappointed that the decision-making had been so superficial. “I hear you,” she said. But she also blamed Brooks, at C.B.U., who had not forcefully protested the decision. Brooks told me that it felt fruitless to try, given all the pressures the school district was under because of the new state laws. He was just trying to put on programming as amicably as possible.

These were the reverberating effects of censorship laws: an academic department in a majority-Black school system casually rejecting a book about the life of George Floyd; nonprofit groups capitulating to avoid causing controversy; writers having to resort to back channels to get information to Black people in the South.

The next day, Stout sent another e-mail. She wanted us to know that the school district had decided to order copies of “His Name Is George Floyd,” so it could be placed under academic review. If the book is deemed appropriate, the district plans to put it in the Whitehaven High School library. She had no idea how much time it would take to make the determination. ♦

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Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark

Books and other art are often censored for covertly racist reasons.

In 1982, the American Library Association established Banned Books Week in response to the increase in challenges to books in libraries, classrooms, and school libraries.

The Reasons for Censoring

Of course, censorship and challenging creative thought did not begin in the 1980s. The earliest form of censorship was book burning, carried out in order to solidify governmental power, erase history, and prevent the spread of ideas.

Dr. Whitney Strub tackles the latter in “ Black and White and Banned All Over: Race, Censorship, and Obscenity in Postwar Memphis. ” According to Strub, the Board of Censors and the Memphis city government worked to censor films and media that they considered inappropriate. Ultimately, the films that they censored included scenes featuring a mixing of Black and White characters. There was a particular focus on regulating images of real or imagined intimate relations between Black men and White women, a trope that is a legacy of Reconstruction . The censors felt that the message of these films was one of “social equality” that challenged normative values. The intent was that by censoring these images, the Black community in Memphis would not get the wrong idea about their “place” in society.

Books, film, and art are commonly banned or challenged in American society because they are sexually explicit. However, as Strub notes, historically people use sex as a code for race. It is easier or more politically correct to claim that you oppose a work of art because it is sexually explicit, than to object to how it portrays race. A prime example of this comes from the challenges of Beloved and The Bluest Eye  by Toni Morrison and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou in schools and libraries across the country. All three of these works deal with issues relating to racism and have a sexual component. Nevertheless, they make a larger argument about the role and treatment of girls and women in American society.

The Societal Impact of Censorship

Attempts to remove texts like these limit students’ ability to engage with subject matter that will help them survive in society and understand what is happening in their own lives and the lives of others. Tonya Perry explores the impact in “ Taking Time to Reflect on Censorship: Warriors, Wanderers, and Magicians. ” She notes that there are three roles an educator can play: warrior (who teaches just the facts), wanderer (who encourages questioning and interpreting experiences), and magician (where learning meets action and transformation). The magician educator will have material that addresses subject matter such as sexual harassment, sexuality, racism, and sexism, and demonstrates to students how they can put this knowledge into action. Thus, students become producers as opposed to being consumers of knowledge.

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According to Perry, those who censor in an attempt to “protect” students are actually doing them a disservice by not providing them the language and tools to communicate. Furthermore, it disproportionately impacts the students who come from underrepresented communities. Censorship signifies that their stories and histories are not valuable or important enough to be studied. As Strub notes, the act of censoring puts attention on the action of the challenge rather than addressing the societal issues that are facing American communities. In other words: censorship is a dangerous distraction.

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The Rise in Book Bans and Censorship

Readers discuss complaints against “Maus,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Beloved” and other books.

To the Editor:

Re “ Politics Fuels Surge in Calls for Book Bans ” (front page, Jan. 31):

I am amazed that all of the people in a frenzy to ban books have overlooked a book that is in most public libraries, and features fratricide, incest, adultery, murder, drunkenness, slavery, bestiality, baby killing, torture, parents killing their own children, and soldiers slaughtering defenseless women and children. It’s almost guaranteed to give children, and even adults, nightmares. If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s called the Bible.

Steve Fox Columbia, Md.

Most surprising? That “To Kill a Mockingbird” is among a library’s association’s 10 most-challenged books in 2020.

The book explores the moral nature of human beings. While a work of fiction, it reflects an uncomfortable, painful time in our history.

Fiction transports you to a different era in time. It exposes you to a different community from your own; it expands your worldview. It allows you to understand the problems humanity has grappled with over the ages.

By reading literature like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” children learn to think critically, to imagine, to solve problems. They become caring, thoughtful people. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” Atticus tells Scout.

Ultimately, Harper Lee wanted us to see that good may not triumph over evil. But each and every one of us has the opportunity to make that choice. She told us, in Scout’s words to Jem: “I think there is just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Laurian Pennylegion Redmond, Wash.

Let the librarians do their job.

Books do not end up on library shelves by accident. Librarians have guidelines that include reviews, awards, school curriculums and other factors that they take into consideration before deciding if a particular title is worth adding to the collection.

It is important that a well-balanced collection is developed that will meet the needs of all and not just reflect a single point of view. Every library needs to have in place a well-defined protocol to use when there is a complaint from a member of the community. It usually includes a committee of people who have actually read the book and can discuss its value to various patrons.

Calls by politicians and others to ban books they often have not read is censorship.

What about parents’ rights? Monitor what your children are reading and talk to them about it. Tell them to stop reading it, if that is the right choice for your child. You do not have a right to speak for everyone in your community because you do not like the book and oppose the topic.

Many thanks to those students who are speaking up at school boards for their right to have books that are important to them. Adults in the community need to take a page out of their book and stand against censorship.

Marilyn Elie Cortlandt Manor, N.Y. The writer is a retired school librarian.

Re “ Tennessee Board Bans Teaching of Holocaust Novel ” (news article, Jan. 29):

I’m Jewish, from New York City, and I taught at a state university serving low-income Tennessee students for 25 years. So I need to set the record straight.

Every Tennessee fifth grader is required to learn about the Holocaust . My university, with its minuscule fraction of Jewish students, has a Holocaust studies minor. We host an international Holocaust conference every two years.

To convey the magnitude of six million lost, three decades ago teachers in Whitwell, Tenn., asked their eighth-grade class to collect that many paper clips. They ended up with 30 million, sent to the school from people around the world. These are on display in the school’s Children’s Holocaust Memorial, housed in a boxcar from Germany, which may be the most riveting testament of young people working together to vow “Never again.”

People in the rural South have different cultural norms. After moving to Tennessee, I learned you don’t swear in class. But painting a state as yahoos and Holocaust deniers for rejecting cursing or nudity in one book epitomizes the very stereotype we people who study the Holocaust should always abhor.

Janet Belsky Chicago

Re “ A Disturbing Book Changed My Life ,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Sunday Review, Jan. 30):

One could argue that Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” which depicts the fascism and bigotry flourishing in Poland in the 1940s, mirrors a disturbingly similar political climate, albeit to a lesser degree, in America today. Maybe that is the real reason the Tennessee school board preferred to limit this information to its young scholars.

“Books are inseparable from ideas,” Mr. Nguyen notes.

For that reason alone the current book-banning trend in America is an abomination. It does not belong in an educated, open-minded and enlightened society. From the evidence of late, these attributes do not define America today, nor does their paucity offer much promise for the future. The “dumbing down” of America is no longer a joke.

Michael Dater Portsmouth, N.H.

While I certainly agree with Viet Thanh Nguyen that books “are not inert tools of pedagogy” and that “book banning doesn’t fit neatly into the rubrics of left and right politics,” I adamantly disagree with his claim that book banners “are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be.”

As a mother of six children ranging from high school to toddlerhood, I know that not every topic is appropriate at every age. Even the Bible gets edited for content when presented to younger children — no children’s illustrated Bible includes Absalom having sex with his father King David’s concubines so as not to corrupt young minds.

Books that depict graphic sex — and that is the problem with Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” not the topic of slavery — have no place in school libraries and curriculums. Pornography masquerading as school-age literature is child abuse.

Amanda Bonagura Floral Park, N.Y.

On the Kenai Peninsula, where I live, right-wing vaccine-hating opinions thrive. When a librarian reported to the City Council for (usually automatic) approval of a $1,500 grant for wellness books, a commissioner wanted to know if there were any Covid books on the list. The commission delayed the approval until a complete list of books could be provided, even though other commissioners warned of the slippery slope of censorship.

Two enterprising library fans started a GoFundMe site to raise the $1,500 for the books. In two weeks they raised $15,000 for the library. Sometimes the silent majority speaks.

Christine DeCourtney Nikiski, Alaska

Kudos to Viet Thanh Nguyen for his fine essay. When I was a young, devoutly Catholic girl of 12, I heard about a book simply called “The Index.” I was told I was forbidden to read books that were listed in it. That proscription was like throwing red meat to a lion. I was becoming interested in sex and thought for sure this must be some hot book list!

I went to the public library in our small town in southern Minnesota and found a sympathetic, if puzzled, librarian to help me. I couldn’t wait to open the small red leather-bound book she handed me, and to see what I should not see.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the authors listed in this book. They were not, as I had imagined, authors writing about sex. Instead, I saw names of the giants of the Western canon gathered before my eyes! Even I knew who Pascal, Rousseau, Stendhal and Voltaire were, although I’d not yet read them. How could this be? What did the adults not want me to know?

From that time forward I was an insatiable reader of everything I could get my hands on. To this day I support the liberal arts as one important way to open the American mind. And I consider censorship the path toward ignorance and prejudice.

Judith Koll Healey Minneapolis The writer is the author of works of fiction, biography, poetry and short stories.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Censorship

Introduction.

• Essay Collections
• British Nondramatic Literature
• Print Licensing
• The English Book Trade and Regulation
• Religious Licensing for Print
• License and Copyright
• Sedition and Treason
• Slander and Libel
• Obscenity and Blasphemy
• Medieval Nondramatic Literature
• Tudor and Early Stuart Nondramatic Literature
• Late Stuart through Victorian Nondramatic Literature
• Modern Nondramatic Literature
• Single-Author and Period Literature
• Before the Licensing Act of 1737
• The Licensing Act of 1737
• Irish Nondramatic Literature
• Irish Drama

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Censorship by Cyndia Susan Clegg LAST REVIEWED: 12 December 2016 LAST MODIFIED: 27 November 2023 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0011

As Donald Thomas aptly suggests, the difficulty of writing about literary censorship “is to avoid writing the history of too many other things at the same time” ( Thomas 1969 , cited under General Overviews , p. xi). Censorship poses both a semantic and a diachronic problem. The word censorship may refer to the positive law that prescribes what may or may not be spoken or written under its definitions and to the punishment of the law’s transgressors. In English law this is complicated by the body of case law that mediates the positive law through interpretation and precedents and that can transform law over time. Censorship may also refer to prior restraint (usually licensing), that is, to efforts to vet texts prior to publication or performance. Licensing itself is not entirely a distinct category, however, because in the early years of British publishing, licensing was an early form of copyright that protected a publisher’s “ownership” of a book. Similarly, dramatic license might entail the permission of a dramatic censor—from early on through the office of the Lord Chamberlain—or it might involve a grant (usually royal) for an acting company or a theater to do business. In addition, although the word censorship is usually associated with government or church regulation and restraint, special interests—public, commercial, and personal—have influenced motives for and acts of control. With such pressures it is not surprising that censorship changes over time and reflects particular concerns and interests at any given cultural moment, resulting in a diachronic problem for defining censorship. This is further complicated with regard to the censorship of English and Irish literature. Ireland, though culturally different, for many years was subject to English rule, so for much of its history Irish literature was regulated by the same laws as English literature. With the creation of the Irish Free State in the early twentieth century, and later, the Republic of Ireland, Ireland enacted regulations that differed drastically from English regulation and that reflected very different cultural pressures. Literary censorship, then, is not a static category; instead, it encompasses cultural bias, politics, religion, law, publishing and trade relations, copyright, and the responses of individual writers to any or all these. To sort out this complexity, censorship and English literature must be considered separately from censorship and Irish literature, and dramatic censorship for each must be considered separately from censorship and publication (manuscript or print).

General Overviews

Even though categories of literary periods have fallen out of fashion in literary studies, diachronic changes in the motives for and practices of censorship mean that most studies of literature and censorship restrict themselves to specific time periods. There are a few resources on literary censorship. Moore 2016 offers an introduction to the topic. The organization Index on Censorship , founded in 1972, issues an eponymous quarterly journal that considers every aspect of censorship and free speech and frequently publishes articles on literary censorship. Thomas 1969 provides a historical narrative that encompasses the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the first half of the twentieth. Gillett 1932 gives a chronological account of banned books to the end of the seventeenth century. Heyworth-Dunne 2022 surveys best-known occasions of literary censorship as does Baltussen and Davis 2015 . The bibliography in Feather 2006 addresses more than censorship and banned books but identifies the most important books about censorship. The other bibliographies, Hart 1872–1878 and May 2016 , are restricted to specific time periods: Hart, from 1530 to 1660, and May, to the long eighteenth century.

Baltussen, Hans, and Peter J. Davis, eds. The art of veiled speech: Self-censorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Historical approach to literary self-censorship that contains two chapters on early modern literature.

Feather, John. A History of British Publishing . 2d ed. London: Routledge, 2006.

Originally published in 1988. This is essential reading for anyone new to studies in censorship and the history of the book. The bibliography in the second edition is comprehensive and extensive, but on far more than censorship and literature.

Gillett, Charles Ripley. Burned Books: Neglected Chapters in British History and Literature . 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.

This frequently cited text covers censorship in England between 1509 and 1900, mistakenly assuming that any book that provoked objections constituted a “burned book.” Organized chronologically by date of author’s life even though the book in question may not have been condemned until the Oxford convocation decree of 1683. Cressy 2005 (cited under Tudor and Early Stuart Nondramatic Literature ) clarifies the practice of book burning in England.

Hart, W. H. Index expurgatorius anglicanus; or, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Principal Books Printed or Published in England, Which Have Been Suppressed, or Burnt by the Common Hangman, or Censured, or for Which the Authors, Printers, or Publishers Have Been Prosecuted . London: Smith, 1872–1878.

An annotated, chronological bibliography of books suppressed between 1530 and 1660. Explains how and why the books were censored, often providing evidence from calendars of state papers, records of state trials, and parliamentary journals. Late-20th and early-21st-century scholarship has revisited this material, finding and correcting errors. See Clegg 1997 , Clegg 2001 , and Clegg 2008 (all cited under Tudor and Early Stuart Nondramatic Literature ).

Heyworth-Dunne, Victoria. Banned Books: The World’s Most Controversial Books, Past and Present . New York: DK Publishing, 2022.

This volume includes consideration of some of the most familiar instances of censorship, from Wycliff’s Bible to Lady Chatterley’s Lover , but it also visits some that are less well known. It is thorough and offers thoughtful considerations of the motives and mechanisms of literary censorship.

Index on Censorship .

This is an organization founded in 1972 by Writers and Scholars International. It is headquartered in London and campaigns globally for freedom of expression. Its quarterly journal, Index on Censorship , publishes significant articles on censorship, including those on English and Irish literature, as well as on censorship’s legal, political, and cultural contexts.

May, James E. Recent Studies of Censorship, Press Freedom, Libel, Obscenity, etc., in the Long Eighteenth Century, Published c. 1985–2015 . New York: Bibliography Society of America, 2016.

A comprehensive bibliography containing material that appeared after 1986 in British and Continental publications. Expands upon a two-part bibliography published in 2004 and 2005 in the East-Central Intelligencer , the newsletter of the East-Central/American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, now published as Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer .

Moore, Nicole. “ Censorship .” Oxford Research Encyclopedia . New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

A comprehensive introduction to all aspects of censorship.

Thomas, Donald Serrell. A Long Time Burning: The History of Literary Censorship in England . New York: Praeger, 1969.

A history of literary censorship in England that reflects the transformation in the motives for censorship, from political beginnings into the eighteenth century, to blasphemy for the remainder of that century, and then to obscene libel and sexual morality in the nineteenth century. The study concludes with a brief consideration of censorship in the twentieth century. A respectable, if slightly outdated, overview of the subject.

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15.4 Censorship and Freedom of Speech

Learning objectives.

• Explain the FCC’s process of classifying material as indecent, obscene, or profane.
• Describe how the Hay’s Code affected 20th-century American mass media.

Figure 15.3

Attempts to censor material, such as banning books, typically attract a great deal of controversy and debate.

Timberland Regional Library – Banned Books Display At The Lacey Library – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

To fully understand the issues of censorship and freedom of speech and how they apply to modern media, we must first explore the terms themselves. Censorship is defined as suppressing or removing anything deemed objectionable. A common, everyday example can be found on the radio or television, where potentially offensive words are “bleeped” out. More controversial is censorship at a political or religious level. If you’ve ever been banned from reading a book in school, or watched a “clean” version of a movie on an airplane, you’ve experienced censorship.

Much as media legislation can be controversial due to First Amendment protections, censorship in the media is often hotly debated. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press (Case Summaries).” Under this definition, the term “speech” extends to a broader sense of “expression,” meaning verbal, nonverbal, visual, or symbolic expression. Historically, many individuals have cited the First Amendment when protesting FCC decisions to censor certain media products or programs. However, what many people do not realize is that U.S. law establishes several exceptions to free speech, including defamation, hate speech, breach of the peace, incitement to crime, sedition, and obscenity.

Classifying Material as Indecent, Obscene, or Profane

To comply with U.S. law, the FCC prohibits broadcasters from airing obscene programming. The FCC decides whether or not material is obscene by using a three-prong test.

Obscene material:

• causes the average person to have lustful or sexual thoughts;
• depicts lawfully offensive sexual conduct; and
• lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Material meeting all of these criteria is officially considered obscene and usually applies to hard-core pornography (Federal Communications Commission). “Indecent” material, on the other hand, is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be banned entirely.

Indecent material:

• contains graphic sexual or excretory depictions;
• dwells at length on depictions of sexual or excretory organs; and
• is used simply to shock or arouse an audience.

Material deemed indecent cannot be broadcast between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., to make it less likely that children will be exposed to it (Federal Communications Commission).

These classifications symbolize the media’s long struggle with what is considered appropriate and inappropriate material. Despite the existence of the guidelines, however, the process of categorizing materials is a long and arduous one.

There is a formalized process for deciding what material falls into which category. First, the FCC relies on television audiences to alert the agency of potentially controversial material that may require classification. The commission asks the public to file a complaint via letter, e-mail, fax, telephone, or the agency’s website, including the station, the community, and the date and time of the broadcast. The complaint should “contain enough detail about the material broadcast that the FCC can understand the exact words and language used (Federal Communications Commission).” Citizens are also allowed to submit tapes or transcripts of the aired material. Upon receiving a complaint, the FCC logs it in a database, which a staff member then accesses to perform an initial review. If necessary, the agency may contact either the station licensee or the individual who filed the complaint for further information.

Once the FCC has conducted a thorough investigation, it determines a final classification for the material. In the case of profane or indecent material, the agency may take further actions, including possibly fining the network or station (Federal Communications Commission). If the material is classified as obscene, the FCC will instead refer the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has the authority to criminally prosecute the media outlet. If convicted in court, violators can be subject to criminal fines and/or imprisonment (Federal Communications Commission).

Each year, the FCC receives thousands of complaints regarding obscene, indecent, or profane programming. While the agency ultimately defines most programs cited in the complaints as appropriate, many complaints require in-depth investigation and may result in fines called notices of apparent liability (NAL) or federal investigation.

Table 15.1 FCC Indecency Complaints and NALs: 2000–2005

Violence and Sex: Taboos in Entertainment

Although popular memory thinks of old black-and-white movies as tame or sanitized, many early filmmakers filled their movies with sexual or violent content. Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery , for example, is known for expressing “the appealing, deeply embedded nature of violence in the frontier experience and the American civilizing process,” and showcases “the rather spontaneous way that the attendant violence appears in the earliest developments of cinema (Film Reference).” The film ends with an image of a gunman firing a revolver directly at the camera, demonstrating that cinema’s fascination with violence was present even 100 years ago.

Porter was not the only U.S. filmmaker working during the early years of cinema to employ graphic violence. Films such as Intolerance (1916) and The Birth of a Nation (1915) are notorious for their overt portrayals of violent activities. The director of both films, D. W. Griffith, intentionally portrayed content graphically because he “believed that the portrayal of violence must be uncompromised to show its consequences for humanity (Film Reference).”

Although audiences responded eagerly to the new medium of film, some naysayers believed that Hollywood films and their associated hedonistic culture was a negative moral influence. As you read in Chapter 8 “Movies” , this changed during the 1930s with the implementation of the Hays Code. Formally termed the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, the code is popularly known by the name of its author, Will Hays, the chairman of the industry’s self-regulatory Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), which was founded in 1922 to “police all in-house productions (Film Reference).” Created to forestall what was perceived to be looming governmental control over the industry, the Hays Code was, essentially, Hollywood self-censorship. The code displayed the motion picture industry’s commitment to the public, stating:

Motion picture producers recognize the high trust and confidence which have been placed in them by the people of the world and which have made motion pictures a universal form of entertainment…. Hence, though regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purposes of teaching or propaganda, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking (Arts Reformation).

Among other requirements, the Hays Code enacted strict guidelines on the portrayal of violence. Crimes such as murder, theft, robbery, safecracking, and “dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc.” could not be presented in detail (Arts Reformation). The code also addressed the portrayals of sex, saying that “the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing (Arts Reformation).”

Figure 15.4

As the chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, Will Hays oversaw the creation of the industry’s self-censoring Hays Code.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

As television grew in popularity during the mid-1900s, the strict code placed on the film industry spread to other forms of visual media. Many early sitcoms, for example, showed married couples sleeping in separate twin beds to avoid suggesting sexual relations.

By the end of the 1940s, the MPPDA had begun to relax the rigid regulations of the Hays Code. Propelled by the changing moral standards of the 1950s and 1960s, this led to a gradual reintroduction of violence and sex into mass media.

Ratings Systems

As filmmakers began pushing the boundaries of acceptable visual content, the Hollywood studio industry scrambled to create a system to ensure appropriate audiences for films. In 1968, the successor of the MPPDA, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), established the familiar film ratings system to help alert potential audiences to the type of content they could expect from a production.

Film Ratings

Although the ratings system changed slightly in its early years, by 1972 it seemed that the MPAA had settled on its ratings. These ratings consisted of G (general audiences), PG (parental guidance suggested), R (restricted to ages 17 or up unless accompanied by a parent), and X (completely restricted to ages 17 and up). The system worked until 1984, when several major battles took place over controversial material. During that year, the highly popular films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins both premiered with a PG rating. Both films—and subsequently the MPAA—received criticism for the explicit violence presented on screen, which many viewers considered too intense for the relatively mild PG rating. In response to the complaints, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating to indicate that some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Another change came to the ratings system in 1990, with the introduction of the NC-17 rating. Carrying the same restrictions as the existing X rating, the new designation came at the behest of the film industry to distinguish mature films from pornographic ones. Despite the arguably milder format of the rating’s name, many filmmakers find it too strict in practice; receiving an NC-17 rating often leads to a lack of promotion or distribution because numerous movie theaters and rental outlets refuse to carry films with this rating.

Television and Video Game Ratings

Regardless of these criticisms, most audience members find the rating system helpful, particularly when determining what is appropriate for children. The adoption of industry ratings for television programs and video games reflects the success of the film ratings system. During the 1990s, for example, the broadcasting industry introduced a voluntary rating system not unlike that used for films to accompany all TV shows. These ratings are displayed on screen during the first 15 seconds of a program and include TV-Y (all children), TV-Y7 (children ages 7 and up), TV-Y7-FV (older children—fantasy violence), TV-G (general audience), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-14 (parents strongly cautioned), and TV-MA (mature audiences only).

Table 15.2 Television Ratings System

Source: http://www.tvguidelines.org/ratings.htm

At about the same time that television ratings appeared, the Entertainment Software Rating Board was established to provide ratings on video games. Video game ratings include EC (early childhood), E (everyone), E 10+ (ages 10 and older), T (teen), M (mature), and AO (adults only).

Table 15.3 Video Game Ratings System

Source: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

Even with these ratings, the video game industry has long endured criticism over violence and sex in video games. One of the top-selling video game series in the world, Grand Theft Auto , is highly controversial because players have the option to solicit prostitution or murder civilians (Media Awareness). In 2010, a report claimed that “38 percent of the female characters in video games are scantily clad, 23 percent baring breasts or cleavage, 31 percent exposing thighs, another 31 percent exposing stomachs or midriffs, and 15 percent baring their behinds (Media Awareness).” Despite multiple lawsuits, some video game creators stand by their decisions to place graphic displays of violence and sex in their games on the grounds of freedom of speech.

Key Takeaways

• The U.S. Government devised the three-prong test to determine if material can be considered “obscene.” The FCC applies these guidelines to determine whether broadcast content can be classified as profane, indecent, or obscene.
• Established during the 1930s, the Hays Code placed strict regulations on film, requiring that filmmakers avoid portraying violence and sex in films.
• After the decline of the Hays Code during the 1960s, the MPAA introduced a self-policed film ratings system. This system later inspired similar ratings for television and video game content.

Look over the MPAA’s explanation of each film rating online at http://www.mpaa.org/ratings/what-each-rating-means . View a film with these requirements in mind and think about how the rating was selected. Then answer the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Would this material be considered “obscene” under the Hays Code criteria? Would it be considered obscene under the FCC’s three-prong test? Explain why or why not. How would the film be different if it were released in accordance to the guidelines of the Hays Code?
• Do you agree with the rating your chosen film was given? Why or why not?

Arts Reformation, “The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code),” ArtsReformation, http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html .

Case Summaries, “First Amendment—Religion and Expression,” http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/ .

Federal Communications Commission, “Obscenity, Indecency & Profanity: Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.fcc.gov/eb/oip/FAQ.html .

Film Reference, “Violence,” Film Reference, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Romantic-Comedy-Yugoslavia/Violence-BEGINNINGS.html .

Media Awareness, Media Issues, “Sex and Relationships in the Media,” http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_sex.cfm .

Media Awareness, Media Issues, “Violence in Media Entertainment,” http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/violence_entertainment.cfm .

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

A Case for Reading - Examining Challenged and Banned Books

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Any work is potentially open to attack by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason. This lesson introduces students to censorship and how challenges to books occur. They are then invited to read challenged or banned books from the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books . Students decide for themselves what should be done with these books at their school by writing a persuasive essay explaining their perspectives. Students share their pieces with the rest of the class, and as an extension activity, can share their essays with teachers, librarians, and others in their school.

Featured Resources

T-Chart Printout : This printable sheet allows students to keep notes on parts of books that they believe might be challenged, as well as supporting reasons. Persuasive Writing Rubric : Use this rubric to evaluate the organization, conventions, goal, delivery, and mechanics of students' persuasive writing. The rubric can be adapted for any persuasive essay. Persuasion Map : Use this online tool to map out and print your persuasive argument. Included are spaces to map out your thesis, three reasons, and supporting details.

From Theory to Practice

There are times that the books that are part of our curriculum are found to be questionable or offensive by other groups. Should teachers stop using those texts? Should the books be banned from schools? No! "Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distorted picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture. Partly because of censorship or the fear of censorship, many writers are ignored or inadequately represented in the public schools, and many are represented in anthologies not by their best work but by their ‘safest' or ‘least offensive' work," as stated in the NCTE Guideline. What then should the English teacher do? "Freedom of inquiry is essential to education in a democracy. To establish conditions essential for freedom, teachers and administrators need to work together. The community that entrusts students to the care of an English teacher should also trust that teacher to exercise professional judgment in selecting or recommending books. The English teacher can be free to teach literature, and students can be free to read whatever they wish only if informed and vigilant groups, within the profession and without, unite in resisting unfair pressures." This is the Students' Right to Read. Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

• Selected books as examples (from the most frequently challenged books list)
• Example Family Letter
• Persuasion Map
• Book Challenge Investigation Bookmarks
• Persuasive Writing Rubric

Preparation

• Because this lesson requires that students read a book from the ALA Challenged Book list, it’s a good idea to notify families prior to starting the assignment. See the example family letter for ideas on how to notify families.
• Bookmark the websites listed as resources to refer to throughout the lesson.
• Compile grade-appropriate books for students to explore using the Challenged Children's Books list .  Talk to your librarian or school media specialist about creating a resource collection for students to use in your classroom or in the library.
• Copy T-Charts and/or bookmarks for students to document passages as they read.
• Test the Persuasion Map on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• be exposed to the issues of censorship, challenged, or banned books.
• examine issues of censorship as it relates to a specific literature title.
• critically evaluate books based on relevancy, biases, and errors.
• develop and support a position on a particular book by writing a persuasive essay about their chosen title.

Session One

• Display a selection of banned or challenged books in a prominent place in your classroom. Include in this selection books meant for children and any included in the school curriculum. Ask students to speculate on what these books have in common.
• Explain to the students that these books have been "censored."  Ask students to brainstorm a definition of censorship and record the students' ideas on the board or chart paper. When you have come up with a definition the group agrees on, have students record the definition.
• Brainstorm ways in which things are censored for them already and who controls what is censored and how. Examples include Internet filtering, ratings on movies, video games, music, and self-censoring (choosing to watch only 1 news show or choosing not to read a certain type of book).  Discuss circumstances in which censorship would be necessary, if any, with the students.
• Provide the students’ definitions for challenged books as well as banned books. (Share these American Library Association definitions: “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.”)
• After the students have seen the ALA definition, have the students “grow” in their own definitions. Ask them to revisit their definition and align it with the one presented by the American Library Association.
• Invite the students to brainstorm any books that they have heard of that have been challenged or banned from schools or libraries. Ask them if they know why those books were found to be controversial.
• Students should then brainstorm titles of other books that they feel could possibly be challenged or banned from their school collection.  Allow time for students to share these titles with their classmates and offer an explanation of why they think these titles could possibly be challenged or banned.
• Share with the students a list of banned books .
• Did they find them to be entertaining, informative, beneficial or objectionable?
• Can they suggest reasons why someone would object to elementary, middle school or high school students reading these books?
• If desired, complete the session by allowing students to learn more about Banned Books Week , additional challenged/banned books, and cases involving First Amendment Rights.

Session Two

• From a teacher-selected list of grade-appropriate books from the Challenged Children's Books list , have groups of students select one of the books to read in literature circles, traditional reading groups, or through read-alouds.
• As the students read, ask them to pay particular attention to the features in the books that may have made them controversial. As students find quotes/parts of the book that they find to be controversial, they should add them to their T-Chart , along with an explanation of why they think that this area could be controversial.  On the left side of their T-Chart , they will list the quote or section of the book (with page numbers); on the right side of the T-Chart , they will write their thoughts on why this area could be seen as controversial.
• You may also choose to invite the students to use bookmarks (in addition to or instead of the T-Chart ) , so they can record page numbers and passages as they read.

Session Three

• After the students have completed the reading of their book, have a group or class discussion on the students' findings that they recorded on their bookmarks or T-Chart .
• Next, explain to students that they will be writing a persuasive piece stating what they believe should be done with the book that has been challenged. If students read the book in groups, they could write a team response.
• Share the  Persuasive Writing Rubric to explore the requirements of the assignment in more detail and allow for students' questions about the assignment.
• Demonstrate the Persuasion Map and work through a sample book challenge to show students how to use the tool to structure their essays.
• Provide students with access to computers, and allow students the remainder of class to work with the Persuasion Map as a brainstorming tool and to guide them through work on their papers.  If computer access is a problem, you may provide students with print copies of the Persuasion Map Printout .
• Encourage students to share their thoughts and opinions with the class as they work on their drafts.  Students should print out their work at the end of the session.

Session Four

• Invite students to share their persuasive pieces with the rest of the class. It is their job to persuade teachers, librarians, or administrators to keep the book in their collection, remove the book from their collection, or add the book to their collection.
• For an authentic sharing session, invite parents in for a panel discussion while the children present their thoughts and opinions on the matter of challenged and banned books.
• Students can discuss the books after each presentation to draw conclusions about each title and about censorship and challenges overall.

Concerned Parent The concerned parent is interested in how controversial materials affect school children. The concerned parent wants to maintain a healthy learning environment for students.   Classroom Teacher The Classroom Teacher needs to select books that will both match the interests of the students and also meet the requirements of the curriculum. The Classroom Teacher needs to listen to the parents, and also follow the rules of the school.   School Library Media Specialist The School Library Media Specialist selects library materials based on the curriculum and reading interests the students in the school.   School Lawyer The School Lawyer is concerned about how the students’ civil liberties would be affected if the School Board decided to ban books.

• Students can elicit responses and reactions from peers, teachers, administrators, librarians, the author, and parents in regards to the particular book they are researching. Ask students to focus on the appropriateness of the book in reference to an elementary school collection.  
• Discuss Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico and how after the decision from that court case public school districts around the country developed policies concerning book challenges in elementary, middle, and high school libraries.
• Students can play the role of the librarian and decide where a challenged/banned book should be shelved. For example, the challenged book may be a picture book, but the “librarian” might decide that the book should instead be shelved in the Teacher Resource Section of the library. An alternative for Sessions Three and Four for this lesson plan is to ask students to write persuasive essays explaining where the book should be shelved and why it should be shelved there.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• As students discuss censorship and challenged/banned books, and as they read their selected text, listen for comments that indicate they are identifying specific examples from the story that connect to the information they have learned (you should also check for evidence of this on their bookmarks or T-Chart ). The connections that they make between the details in the novel and the details they choose as their supporting reasons for their persuasive piece will reveal their understanding and engagement with the books.
• Monitor student interaction and progress during any group work to assess social skills and assist any students having problems.
• Respond to the content and quality of students’ thoughts in their final reflections on the project. Look for indications that the student provides supporting evidence for the reflections, thus applying the lessons learned from the work with the Persuasion Map .
• Assess students’ persuasive writing piece using the rubric .
• Calendar Activities
• Professional Library
• Student Interactives
• Lesson Plans

Students brainstorm reasons why certain books might have been banned and discuss common reasons why books are challenged.

Students adapt a Roald Dahl story to picture book format and share their books and add them to the classroom library. Additionally, they compare a book version and film version of one of Dahl's works.

Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.

The current edition of The Students' Right to Read is an adaptation and updating of the original Council statement, including "Citizen's Request for Reconsideration of a Work."

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

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My Thoughts on Literary Censorship and Controversy

• Published: March 2024
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2024. "My Thoughts on Literary Censorship and Controversy", Sound and Silence : My Experience with China and Literature , Yan Lianke, Carlos Rojas

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In this essay, Yan Lianke reflects on the regime of literary censorship in contemporary China. He notes that this regime has not only affected what he is able to publish in China, but has also helped shape the way that he is perceived, particularly by foreign readers. He emphasizes that although the status of being “banned in China” is often viewed as a selling point in foreign markets, there is no necessary correlation between whether a work is banned and its underlying literary quality. He discusses the relationship between state censorship and processes of self-censorship, noting that he himself has engaged in processes of self-censorship in a (frequently unsuccessful) attempt to ensure that his works will be publishable in China. He concludes that one shouldn't focus on whether specific books have been banned or not, but rather on whether an author strives to write “with some basic rectitude and independence.”

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Sound and Silence : My Experience with China and Literature

Yan Lianke is the author of Discovering Fiction , also published by Duke University Press, as well as Hard Like Water , The Day the Sun Died , The Explosion Chronicles , and many other books. Winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and a two-time finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, Yan teaches at Renmin University in Beijing and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Modern Chinese Cultural Studies at Duke University and translator of several of Yan's novels.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Fahrenheit 451 — Examples Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

Examples of Censorship in Fahrenheit 451

• Categories: Fahrenheit 451

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Published: Mar 5, 2024

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Censorship in Children's Literature

Censorship in children's literature.

Suppressing, altering, or boycotting works of juvenile or young adult literature due to their content or their appropriateness for intended readers.

INTRODUCTION

The issue of censorship as it relates to children's literature continues to provoke debate between opposing factions who each believe they have the best interest of children at heart. Deeply rooted in personal convictions, censorship is a perennial cultural flash-point, particularly when it involves children, whose own voice in the debate is muted at best. "Their ignorance and lack of preconceptions," argues Julia Briggs, "leave children peculiarly vulnerable to outside influences. The claim that they need protection can be extended to justify the exercise of censorship on a variety of grounds." With legions of adults seeking to speak on their children's behalf, fierce arguments arise between opponents of censorship who wish to defend the free speech clause of the First Amendment and those who pursue censorship in order to ban media potentially ill-suited for a juvenile audience. Between 1990 and 2000, the American Library Association (ALA) reported 6,364 challenges to various books in libraries and public schools in the United States . Likewise, in Canada, one third of all schools reported attempts to censor certain materials within a four-year span in the early 1990s. Although censorship is often defined as an overt effort to completely ban books and is regularly associated with the political right, neither assumption accurately reflects the nuance of the ongoing debate. Professor of Library Science and censorship scholar Judith Saltman asserts, "advocates of censorship of children's literature on the left of the political spectrum are becoming uneasy bedfellows with the traditional advocates of censorship, those on the right. The new realism in children's fiction has prompted a call from some for a return to conservative values and limitations on content, and book banning in schools and libraries is threatening to become epidemic."

As practiced, censorship can take many forms. In addition to outright prohibition of objectionable books, various interest groups have at times insisted that certain books be moved into sections of the library that are inaccessible to children, such as behind the librarian's counter or into adult sections where juveniles need parental permission to enter. Less overt censorial practices can also have a dramatic effect on the types of materials that are published in the first place. Examples of these practices, as noted by anti-censorship organizations and authors alike, include self-censure, editorial censorship, and market pressures. Self-censure occurs when an author questions their own work, altering it to accommodate the belief that certain aspects of their texts will face resistance from publishers or readers. Many authors have written about this internal struggle, including Judy Blume , one of the most censored contemporary writers for children. Blume wrote, "What effect does this climate [of censorship] have on a writer? Chilling. It's easy to become discouraged, to second-guess everything you write." Authors occasionally come under pressure from their editors and publishers to alter text or omit potentially objectionable passages for fear of negatively affecting their sales or attracting criticism from sensitive readers. Concern by editors and writers ultimately stems from market pressures, such as when book-sellers refuse to stock objectionable books or when children's advocacy groups organize a boycott of offending publishers, writers, or bookstores. These forms of self-censure have long been the norm in children's literature. According to Mark I. West, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, "[children's] authors automatically assumed that they could not refer to sexuality, mention certain bodily functions, graphically describe violent acts, portray adults in a negative light, use swear words, criticize authority figures or address controversial social issues."

Literary censorship is not a recent phenomenon, however. In the late fourteenth century, the popular Wycliffe Bibles, among the very first translations of the Bible into English, were banned for fear they misrepresented the word of God as expressed in the Latin texts authorized by the Catholic Church. The seventeenth century saw the labeling of Galileo Galilei as a heretic, and his works—principally his doctrine of astronomy, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)—censured and banned for contrasting the facts as determined by the Gospels. Jonathan Swift is often thought to be among the first victims of deliberate censorship by forces outside of organized religion. Certain passages were excised from published editions of Gulliver's Travels (1726), including a scene where Gulliver urinates on a fire in the Lilliputian palace. In the context of children's literature, among the first scholars to recommend different standards of acceptability for children's works was English philosopher John Locke , who argued that goblins, ghosts, and other related folk myths had no place in a child's regular repertoire of stories. Social theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau took this level of argument one step further, arguing in Émile: Or, On Education (1762) that children under twelve should be denied books entirely, suggesting they would be better served learning through the direct experience of life, or "unvarnished truth" as he called it.

By the Victorian Age, children's literature blossomed into a fully independent genre with a greater degree of variety and freedom, although this era saw the first coordinated efforts to ban or alter juvenile works. Penny dreadfuls—a term describing inexpensive series of macabre and violent books targeted primarily at young boys—featured dangerous criminals, serial killers, and mythic monsters of history as their protagonists, including such figures as Spring-Heeled Jack, Dick Turpin , Jack Sheppard, and Sweeney Todd. Concerned with the effects that these stories might have on developing minds, prominent English politicians and religious figures sought to have them banned. Their efforts were largely unsuccessful, though by the turn of the century, these novelty books had generally faded in popularity in England due to changing fads and overproduction. However, within a few years, penny dreadfuls and dime novels began to reach the United States , attracting a similar level of conservative backlash from such notable opponents as Anthony Comstock and Dr. Frederic Wertham. Comstock was the leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and author of Traps for the Young (1883), an impassioned treatise calling for the elimination of dime novels on the grounds that children needed to be protected from the negative influence of such publications. Arguing that "lewd" books had a direct link to perceived increases in juvenile misconduct, he sought an outright ban on their sales. Wertham, Comstock's philosophical heir, likewise alleged in his book Seduction of the Innocent (1954) that the influence of popular lowbrow pulp novels and comic books had triggered a rise in teen delinquency and homosexuality. Wertham's grandstanding led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, an institutionalized form of self-censure created by the comic book industry to reduce public concerns about their content as well as preemptively avoiding even stricter guidelines from Congress. Based on these and several other successful campaigns, many found censorship to be an effective tool for restricting the circulation of books thought to be undesirable, and challenges to individual books began to witness a dramatic increase in the United States beginning in the mid-twentieth century.

Early challenges of this nature were made to books like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), where language and nudity were highlighted as concerns, and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951), which was seen as inspiring insolence in teenagers. Before long, classic works of literature such as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847), Stephen Crane 's The Red Badge of Courage (1895), John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men (1937), and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) were all the subjects of various challenges nationwide. However, the cultural liberalism and youth rebellions of the late 1960s and 1970s led to increased resistance to direct attempts at literary censorship. Mark I. West notes, "As Americans became more accepting of sexuality and less confident in the infallibility of authority figures, a number of authors and editors questioned the legitimacy of the taboos that had encumbered children's literature for so long. This development resulted in the emergence of a new breed of children's books." This "new breed" of juvenile works emphasized realism, placing characters in true-life situations without regard for the heightened sense of propriety that formerly limited the narrative potential of children's literature. Among this new generation of stories were frank depictions of adolescence containing graphically accurate characterizations of troubled teenagers, such as Judy Blume 's Deenie (1973), Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (1974), Lois Duncan's Killing Mr. Griffin (1978), and Alice Childress ' A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1982). Today, the battle lines are regularly redrawn between supporters and opponents of censorship, often on a book-by-book, school-district-by-school-district basis. While some of the tactics and bases for challenges have evolved over the last twenty-five years—with restrictions on books containing homosexual themes or characters having seen perhaps the greatest number of new challenges—many of the same arguments for and against censorship remain as they were in earlier eras.

There are a myriad of reasons why books have been deemed objectionable by certain readers, from the offbeat—such as the removal of Beatrix Potter 's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904) from London classrooms in the 1980s for relying too much on "middle class" rabbits—to the surprising—as shown by the 1983 decision by the Alabama State Textbook Committee to recommend the elimination of Anne Frank 's Het Achterhuis (1947; The Diary of a Young Girl ) from schools because it was "a real downer" and included references to teen sexuality. But, generally, several consistent underlying reasons have been recognized as providing the inspiration for the majority of children's literature censorship challenges. Sexual conduct, such as promiscuity, homosexuality, or even frank examinations of the physical act, is one of the most frequently given reasons for removing a book from a library or school. Books portraying homosexuality as normal or mundane are commonly questioned; examples of some of the most disputed works are Lesléa Newman's Heather Has Two Mommies (1989), Michael Willhoite's picture book Daddy's Roommate (1990), and Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat (1989). A North Carolina challenge of Daddy's Roommate argued that the book "promotes a dangerous and ungodly lifestyle from which children must be protected." Nonfiction titles have also attracted the same sort of censor scrutiny received by fictional narratives: Robie H. Harris's educational text It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (1994) was recognized by the ALA as the most challenged book of 2005 for its inclusion of homosexuality, nudity, sexual content, and sex education issues among its many points of discussion.

Another widely debated topic is the issue of racial portrayals. Questions of presentation, inclusion, and reliance on racial stereotypes in works of children's literature have been the focus of heated confrontations across the United States. Among the most challenged books in this category are Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899) by Helen Bannerman, and The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts (1920) by Hugh Lofting , each accused of reinforcing racial clichés of African Americans . Likewise, Laura Ingalls Wilder 's Little House on the Prairie (1935) has come under fire for dehumanizing the Native American characters that appear in the text. Censors also challenge violent content in works targeted at children or young adults and are quick to correlate such representations of violence with increases in violent deaths among teens over the last twenty years. Authors seeking to draw attention to the problem of violence through literature—such as Walter Dean Myers , who is annually among the ALA's most challenged young adult authors—regularly see their works characterized as glamorizing violence due to their realistic and sometimes sympathetic portrayals of adolescent criminals and gang members. For comparable reasons, the subversion of religious dogma or the introduction of non-Western religious ideas in children's works has angered many American censors, as when Max J. Herzberg's Myths and Their Meaning (1928) was questioned at Colorado's Woodland Park High School "because," according to the challenge, "the stories about mythological figures like Zeus and Apollo threaten Western civilization's foundations." Roald Dahl 's The Witches (1983) offers a unique case study of the diversity of inspirations for censorship challenges. It was attacked by both religious conservatives, who disliked the presence of magic in a children's story, and by liberal feminists, who worried that Dahl's tale offered an overly negative image of women and witches. Alternately, the same book was challenged in Tennessee in 2000 for providing a too "positive" depiction of witches.

Such contrary attacks on the same book illustrate how almost any literary work has the potential to offend someone. Raymond Briggs' innocuous 1973 Greenaway Medal-winning picture book Father Christmas was the subject of a series of challenges protesting its moral message due to an illustration late in the book where Briggs shows Saint Nicholas drinking alcohol. Likewise, Maurice Sendak's picture book In the Night Kitchen (1970) is regularly labeled as indecent by some censors for its nude depiction of its child protagonist. Bad language, inclusion of bodily functions, poor morality, and insolence towards adults are all frequently identified as reasons for censoring or altering offending children's works, and the list of potential crimes grows every year, a fact that Judy Blume laments: "There is no predicting the censor. No telling what will be seen as controversial tomorrow." The end result, she worries, is "the loss to young people. If no one speaks out for them, if they don't speak out for themselves, all they'll get for their reading will be the most bland books available. And instead of finding the information they need at the library, instead of finding the novels that illuminate life, they will find only those materials to which nobody could possibly object."

However pervasive the censor's attacks on children's literature, these challenges remain the exception. As Anne Scott MacLeod argues, "adult attitudes toward children's reading have undergone some major changes during the turbulent years just past. The wide (though not universal) acceptance of a greatly broadened content in children's books seems to stem from the conviction that children should learn as soon as possible the realities of the world they live in—even the hardest and most unsavory realities." Most writers who have been the subject of attempted censorship challenges welcome this hope that literature can indeed affect change when given the chance. There is a widespread belief among critics and scholars alike that censorship limits a child's potential for intellectual growth, and that when enacted, censorship offers only a poor and flawed protection from exposing young readers to some of the world's more morally ambiguous social issues. For Judith Saltman, the potential for literature to help children grow explains a need to tolerate variety in the subject matter of children's literature: "Tolerance is essential in our society, particularly tolerance in recognizing the right of others, especially minors, to make their own decisions about what they will read and their right to have access to a wide range of informational and recreational reading materials to accommodate the diverse interests and needs of youth."

REPRESENTATIVE WORKS

Overviews and general studies, hamida bosmajian (essay date june 1987).

[Text Not Available]

Mark I. West (essay date 1992)

[Image Not Available]

Mark I. West (essay date 1996)

Regional examples of children's literature censorship, peter hunt (essay date june 1997), judith saltman (essay date january-february 1998).

SOURCE: Saltman, Judith. "Censoring the Imagination: Challenges to Children's Books." Emergency Librarian 25, no. 3 (January-February 1998): 8-12.

[ In the following essay, Saltman examines the nature of various censorship challenges against children's works in Canada and the United States, noting the differing patterns inspiring the challenges within the two countries .]

Pressures to ban or censor books for children and young people are on the increase in schools and libraries across North America . Writing in 1996, Judith Krug, Director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, states:

Challenges to library and curricular materials are nothing new. Indeed, the ALA office for intellectual freedom has received reports of more than 3,500 such attempts in the last five years.

Censorship challenges are also on the rise in Canada. David Jenkinson has twice surveyed the province of Manitoba's public schools' responses to challenges of children's books. He comments:

The first time around [in 1982 to 1984], I found out that a quarter of the schools had a challenge…. This time [1991 to 1993], I had a third. So it's increasing.                               (Abercrombie, p. 34)

This is not, however, a new phenomenon. Which books should children read? Are there any books that children should be prohibited from reading? Should they read only the best books, or a mixture of quality, popular and pulp literature; only books of high literary merit or those of social, moral and spiritual edification? These questions have preoccupied teachers, critics, writers and librarians from Charlotte Yonge and Caroline Hewins in the 19th century to Anne Carroll Moore, Bertha Mahony Miller (founder of The Horn Book Magazine ) and Lillian H. Smith (who established the Toronto Public Library's children's services) in the 20th.

Of course, there have always been people with didactic and moralistic views towards children's literature who have scoured children's books for attitudes and ideas from which children should be sheltered. The earliest form of children's literature to come under such scrutiny may have been the oral tradition of fairy and folktale. Folklore has been under attack as unsuitable reading for children at least since the 16th century. In the 17th century, the Puritans condemned fairy tales and literature of the imagination and John Locke deplored children's exposure to fairy tales and old ballads. He could recommend only Aesop's fables and Reynard the fox as having any "moral" value.

In the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his highly influential book Emile or On Education , argued that children should be given nothing but the unvarnished truth. In fact, he suggested children were to have no books before age 12. In 1802, the vigorous Mrs. Sarah Trimmer founded The Guardian of Education , the first magazine to carry regular reviews of children's literature and she followed in Rousseau's footsteps: "We cannot approve of those [books] which are only fit to fill the heads of children with confused notions of wonderful and supernatural events, brought about by the agency of imaginary beings" ( Rev. of Mother , 38).

Mrs. Trimmer had strong guidance for adults; she alerted them to the necessity of "the utmost circumspection … requisite in making a proper selection" of children's books, which "of late years … have multiplied to an astonishing and alarming degree, and much mischief lies hid in many of them" ( On the Care , 4). Perhaps Mrs. Trimmer's most fascinating remarks concern the dangers of Robinson Crusoe, which, she attests, should not "be put into the hands of all boys without discrimination."

Mrs. Trimmer was opposed to books "calculated to entertain the imagination, rather than to improve the heart, or cultivate the understanding" (Trimmer, 1802). Her views were shared by other Victorians who evaluated children's books in terms of the precepts of behavior and lessons in social and religious morality contained within them. One such critic was Edward Salmon who, writing in Juvenile Literature as It Is in 1888, soundly trounced the rather sensationalistic Victorian "penny dreadful" magazines, the new pulp literature stimulated by the fast, cheap printing of the rotary press invention. He thunders:

No element of sweetness and light ever finds its way into their columns and … they are filled with stories of blood and revenge, of passion and cruelty, as improbable and often impossible in plot as their literary execution is contemptible…. Is it surprising that "the pales and forts of reason' should fall before the vicious onslaught?                                          (Egoff, 1981)

The later Victorians and Edwardians developed a more literary and aesthetic perspective on children's literature, and 19th-century moralism waned with the increasing awareness in the 20th century of literary quality in children's books. With this growing sensitivity to literary standards, there developed parallel concerns regarding book selection.

Critics of both centuries saw the need for a set of standards by which to judge children's books, but today there is more disagreement over what principles of evaluation should be used than ever before. And there are more objections and challenges to the content of the books than in any earlier era.

In a throwback to the moral and spiritual guardianship of the likes of Mrs. Trimmer and Edward Salmon, various adult groups since the 1960s have viewed children's literature, once again, as a socializing rather than a literary force. If children's books are evaluated only by the criteria of moral values, "correct" ideas and ultimate influence on children's moral, political and social perceptions, then whose moral and cultural values, whose ideas, should be applied? In fact, the types of complaints received about books in schools, libraries and bookstores take many forms and come from many positions on the political and social spectrum.

The liberal side of the spectrum objects to perceived images of racism, sexism, ageism, elitism, materialism and cultural appropriation, and judges children's books solely for positive images of women, ethnic minorities, senior citizens and the disabled. Many adults judge children's books only on their perceived developmental or bibliotherapeutic values or commitment to social change.

Canadian examples of book challenges in these areas include Beatrice Culleton's April Raintree (originally published as In Search of April Raintree ), criticized for negative portrayal of a Metis girl, role stereotyping and degradation of women. Ian Wallace's Chin Chiang and the Dragon's Dance , was criticized for inaccuracies in the depiction of Chinese culture. False Face by Welwyn Wilton Katz has been attacked for cultural appropriation. A rumor heartily enjoyed by Janet Lunn is that her picture book Amos' Sweater , was rejected by an American publisher on the grounds of ageism: "Amos was old and Amos was cold …" ([3]). Amos is a ram. Objections to the portrayal of characters with disabilities have been made about The Cripples Club by William Bell.

In the United States, Theodore Taylor's The Cay has been challenged as racist. The Indian in the Cupboard and Return of the Indian by British author Lynne Reid Banks have also been challenged because of racist stereotyping of native characters.

Political correctness can reach the heights of absurdity; Beatrix Potter 's classic Tale of Peter Rabbit was banned in England by the London County Council because it portrays only middle-class rabbits.

The American writer and social activist, Nat Hentoff, believes that this reformist attitude to writing for children "fundamentally misunderstands the act of imagination" (177). Children's books written according to politically correct guidelines are created, he says, as a tool for the promotion of social values and social change. He writes:

I apologize for being obvious, but literature cannot breathe if it is forced to be utilitarian in this or any other sense…. [T]ruly creative tellers of tales … cannot be fitted into neat, sanitized, newly 'proper' molds.                                             (177-78)

Ironically, advocates of censorship of children's literature on the left of the political spectrum are becoming uneasy bedfellows with the traditional advocates of censorship, those on the right. The new realism in children's fiction has prompted a call from some for a return to conservative values and limitations on content, and book banning in schools and libraries is threatening to become epidemic.

Conservatives object to frank language and profanity, images of nudity, references to sexuality, especially homosexuality, ideas that threaten their values, such as the undermining of authority and content believed too mature or inappropriate for children's understanding.

Canadian young adult rifles challenged here include, among others, Margaret Buffie's Who Is Frances Rain? , for profanity and Kevin Major's Hold Fast , for explicit language, immorality and sexuality. Marie-Francine Hebert's picture book The Amazing Adventure of Little Fish , was challenged for nudity in one of Darcia Labrosse's illustrations. Adolescent sexuality in the rape and emotional content in William Bell's Crabbe , was considered unsuitable and too intense for younger teen readers. Beatrice Culle-ton's In Search of April Raintree , was similarly banned for rape, explicit sex, child abuse and profanity. There may also have been a publishing "chill" in relation to The First Time , an anthology of true stories of first sexual experiences edited by Charles Montpetit. While three Quebec publishers vied for publishing rights to the French language version, 27 English-Canadian publishers rejected the English language counterpart before it found a home. Bad Boy , by Diana Wieler, has been challenged for inclusion of homosexuality.

In the United States, similar concerns have been raised for the following material: Brock Cole's The Goats has been challenged for nudity and offensive language; James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier's My Brother Sam Is Dead and Katherine Pater-son's The Great Gilly Hopkins for profanity and violence; Lois Lowry's The Giver for violence and sexual passages.

British authors under attack in this area include Raymond Briggs, whose sophisticated picture book, The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman has been challenged for sexually graphic illustrations and Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach , criticized for profanity and promotion of drugs and alcohol.

Perhaps the most extreme response to nudity in picture books was seen when Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen , still regularly challenged, was published in 1970; it was reported that teachers and librarians painted diapers over the naked protagonist.

The presentation of lesbianism, homosexuality and same-sex parents continues to be a strong target in the United States, where challenged rifles include Nancy Garden's young adult novel Annie on My Mind , Leslea Newman's picture book Heather Has Two Mommies , and Michael Wilhoite's picture book Daddy's Roommate , which, since it was published in 1990, has had 84 challenges reported to the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Objections to negative values have been raised against both Canadian picture books and fiction. Robert Munsch's picture book Thomas' Snowsuit has been banned for undermining school principals' authority. The picture book Dinner at Auntie Rose's by Janet Munsil was challenged for disrespect to adults and bad manners. Brian Doyle's novel Hey, Dad! was challenged for its graphic language, negative values and absence of positive citizenship values. Doyle's You Can Pick Me Up at Peggy's Cove has come under attack on a wide range of subjects, from flatulence to racism, defiance of authority to poor role models.

Objections have been raised to Sandra Richmond's young adult Wheels for Walking , for profanity and negative teen behavior, including attitudes towards adults. Both Jan Truss' Jasmin and William Bell's Crabbe have been criticized for the depiction of teenage runaways.

American titles challenged because of negative values include Harry Allard's The Stupids Step Out , attacked for undermining authority and encouraging disrespect and disobedience to parents. Objections to Judy Blume's Blubber have emphasized profanity, immorality, and lack of punishment of the cruel children. Shel Silverstein 's collection of light verse, A Light in the Attic , has been challenged for promotion of disrespectful behavior, as well as for images of death, horror, violence, morbidity, nudity and profanity.

British author-illustrator Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas has come under fire for irreverence and negative values in the image of Santa drinking alcohol.

Fundamentalist groups on the religious right object to references to the occult and to the wizards, witchcraft and magic of folklore and fantasy, blasphemy and differing moral values from their own.

Canadian books caught in the crossfire in this general area include challenges for witchcraft in Susan Mus-grave's Hag Head and in David Booth's educational reading series Impressions , which has been ferociously attacked in the United States and Canada. Robert Munsch's picture book Giant; Or Waiting for the Thursday Boat , has been criticized for blasphemy and violence.

British author Roald Dahl's The Witches has been challenged for witchcraft. American rifles challenged for occultism, witchcraft, and Satanism include The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder, Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam, No Place for Me by Barthe Clements, and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, attacked for references to sorcery and for profanity and negative values.

Among the most commonly challenged books in the United States and Canada is the series of eerie folktale collections by American author Alvin Schwartz ( Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark; More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ; and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones ). These collections of stories of ghosts and witches have been challenged at least 88 times for violence, frightening subject matter, occultism and Satanism.

Individuals or organizations object to depictions that they feel unfairly portray or denigrate their identity or group. The Canadian picture book Maxine's Tree , by Diane Leger-Haskell, was challenged by an organized group of loggers (a local of International Woodworkers of America), who complained that the book was pro-environmentalist, anti-logging and anti-loggers.

Also, in Canada, Cherylyn Stacey's How Do You Spell Abducted? was criticized by a journalist and politician for lack of family values and the promotion of hatred to a specific group: men and fathers.

Parents object to violence and cruelty in fiction and fairy tales and depictions of death, divorce and other social problems and issues which they feel will cause their children fear or other emotional distress. Violence in text and illustration has been the parental objection to the London Bridge nursery rhyme from Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke's Sally Go Round the Sun and to Dennis Lee's and Marie-Louise Gay's picture book Lizzie's Lion .

Alvin Schrader has observed differences of emphasis in American and Canadian challenges. In his survey of censorship in Canada's public libraries between 1985 and 1987, he notes that the 430 reasons for 257 challenged children's rifles reveal a fascinating, and at times bewildering, spectrum of community values, social attitudes, and ideological mindsets. The most common grounds for objections were violence, cruelty, and "scary" titles (24 percent of challenges). Second were titles deemed unsuitable for a particular age group (17 percent), almost always in combination with additional groups such as sex or violence. Third were objections to sexual explicitness, nudity, and pornography (16 percent). Fourth were objections to rifles deemed to promote negative moral values (14 percent) (74-75).

Schrader goes on to make an interesting observation on the differences between censorship patterns in Canada and in the United States:

These [Canadian] patterns are somewhat similar to those found in several American studies of public libraries in individual states or regions. Noticeably absent from the American studies, however, were challenges on the basis of violence, cruelty, and scary titles. In a nationwide study … by Dianne Hopkins of challenges to materials in secondary school libraries, responses showed that violence was at the bottom of the list of concerns, while sexuality, profanity, obscenity and morality ranked highest.                                             (75)

Like Mrs. Trimmer, many adults are wary of the power of ideas, concepts and attitudes found in children's books. Sincere in their concern for children, many individuals wish to protect children from beliefs and realities that they don't agree with, that they don't want their children to adopt, or that they feel are harmful to their children. There will always be those who feel ideas are dangerous, children's books hold much mischief and children inexperienced, vulnerable and easily influenced should be given only books that promote certain, "right" values and thoughts.

Our libraries, schools and bookstores exist, however, in a pluralistic society serving communities which contain families and cultural and social groups with a vast range of beliefs and values, family backgrounds and child-rearing practices. This mandates a concomitant diversity of viewpoints, values and options in our children's books.

Tolerance is essential in our society, particularly tolerance in recognizing the right of others, especially minors, to make their own decisions about what they will read and their right to have access to a wide range of information. It is therefore critical that public and school libraries offer the broadest possible variety of informational and recreational reading materials to accommodate the diverse interests and needs of youth.

Adults who work with children and their books—librarians, teachers, writers, publishers and booksellers empathize with parents' concern to protect children. For we all consider children to be important. In fact, the fervour with which issues in children's literature are debated is a measure of the importance we ascribe to children, the potential inheritors of the values, aspirations and dreams of our culture. Parents play an absolutely critical role in this process. They participate in the active nourishing of their children's minds from the introduction of books in babyhood, to reading aloud throughout childhood, to the seminal discussion of ideas that arise in the context of home reading. This is the perfect time and place for parents and children to examine how family values and beliefs relate to those expressed in books.

In a library context, while parents often guide their children in their reading and, in fact, may actually restrict their children and only their children from access to library materials, librarians do not restrict children's access. They do not serve in loco parentis. Educators also share the role of guiding, but not restricting, children in their choice of reading materials. Librarians and teachers must continue to be defenders of the freedom to read.

Most parents and those who work with children's books, agree that imagination cannot serve utilitarian purposes, that the best literature for children cannot be ideology or propaganda. Children grow in maturity, intellect and imagination through exposure to stories of emotional realism, stories with a diversity of concepts, beliefs, truths. Reading nurtures the child's first steps in self-individuation toward becoming an adult who can think critically, make informed decisions, develop personal value systems and enter into empathetic relationships with other human beings.

Even the most literary of critics certainly could not fault those who, with sensitivity and good will, wish to retire once and for all the negative racial or sexual stereotypes found in the children's literature of earlier eras and sometimes, unfortunately, in that of the present. But the majority of critics, teachers, librarians and parents would be sympathetic to children's author and critic Dorothy Butler, when she argues that adults searching children's books "for unpalatable attitudes from which the child must be sheltered" miss a significant point.

To adults concerned with attitudes in children's books with which they don't agree, Butler recommends tolerance and belief in children's ability to understand complex ideas. Although she is speaking of children's books of an earlier era and their value to our children despite changing social mores, her words also apply to the misapprehension that children's books of any era should be safe or sanitized. Butler says,

Must children grow up believing that no one ever behaved selfishly, exploited nature cruelly, or held rigid racist or sexist attitudes in days gone by? Should our children not be told of the selfish actions and unworthy prejudices of earlier generations? Let them see that the people who held these views and performed these acts were people like themselves, that humankind falls easily into error, and that most people accept without question the mores of the era and society into which they are born … [Children] will learn to look honestly and respond sensitively if the books we give them are good books and true, full of real people be having as well as they can in the face of a world which offers contradictory inducements, the good and the bad inextricably entwined…. Only felt principles ever work for human beings.                                           (551-52)

All books contain messages. The censors believe that by tolerating dissenting opinions we are somehow endorsing them, being approving of them to our children. This is a fallacy. A political or religious group that is totally convinced of the righteousness of its position might wish to suppress differing points of view, but democracy is based on the free exchange of ideas: we tolerate differing opinions not because we endorse them but because we wish to remain free to express our own. Intolerance of differing views in children's books easily leads to vigilante tactics, censorship and the suppression of the imagination.

Bibliography

Abercrombie, N. (1997, March). "Freedom to Read Week 1: Unseen Blocks." Books in Canada 26, 34-35.

Butler, Dorothy. (1983). "Reading Begins at Home: Part I." The Horn Book Magazine 59, 545-52.

Egoff, S. (1981) Thursday's Child . Chicago: American Library Association.

Hentoff, Nat. (1977, November). "Any Writer Who Follows Anyone Else's Guidelines Ought to be in Advertising." School Library Journal 24, 27-29. Rpt. in Beyond Fact: Nonfiction for Children and Young People . Carr, Jo. (Comp.). (1982). Chicago: American Library Association, 176-80.

Krug, J. E. (1996). Introduction. In Hit List: Frequently Challenged Books for Children . Ed. Donna Reidy Pistolis. Chicago: American Library Association, ix.

Lunn, Janet. Amos' Sweater . Illus. by Kim LaFave. Toronto: Groundwood, (1988).

Schrader, A. M. (1992) "Too Young to Know? The Censorship of Children's Materials in Canadian Public Libraries." CCL: Canadian Children's Literature 68, 71-86.

Trimmer, Sarah. (1802). "Observations on the Changes Which Have Taken Place in Books for Children and Young Persons." The Guardian of Education 1, 61-66. Rpt. in A Peculiar Gift: Nineteenth-Century Writing on Books for Children . Salway, L. (Ed.) (1976). Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Eng.: Kestrel, 19-22.

―――――――. "On the Care Which Is Requisite in the Choice of Books for Children." The Guardian of Education 2 (1803): 407-10. Rpt. in Children and Literature: Views and Reviews . Ed. Virginia Haviland. Glenview: Scott, Foresman: 1973. 4-6.

―――――――. Rev. of Mother Bunch's Fairy Tales. The Guardian of Education 2 (1803). Rpt. in Suitable for Children? Controversies in Children's Literature . Ed. Nicholas Tucker. London: Sussex University Press, 1976. 38.

Allen Douglas and Fedwa Malti-Douglas (essay date 1999)

Censorship in the juvenile fantasy and pulp novel genres, michael o. tunnell (essay date december 1994).

SOURCE: Tunnell, Michael O. "The Double-Edged Sword: Fantasy and Censorship." Language Arts 71, no. 8 (December 1994): 606-12.

[ In the following essay, Tunnell expounds on various attempts to censor works of young adult and children's fantasy, asking the question: "During a time in which educators bemoan the lack of creative and critical thinking in our students, how can we avoid the very books and stories that cultivate imaginative thought?" ]

About once every hundred years some wiseacre gets up and tries to banish the fairy tale. Perhaps I had better say a few words in its defence, as reading for children.                          (Lewis, 1980, p. 213)

C. S. Lewis was compelled to write his defense of fantasy stories, particularly traditional tales, in 1952. Yet, in far less than a hundred years, "wiseacres" are trying to banish not only the fairy tale but also much of modern fantasy literature for children. We seem to have entered a new age of censorship, as reflected by the American Library Association's ever-growing annual list of censorship cases affecting schools and public libraries (Doyle, 1993). Within the last decade, both the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have joined the American Library Association in its acute concern about the forces that want to restrict our children's intellectual freedom.

According to children's book editor Phyllis J. Fogle-man, censorship letters received by publishers in the 1970s and 80s mostly complained about sexuality, "but now censors are broadening their scope to include anything that seems even vaguely anti-Christian to them. For a number of fundamentalist groups, certain words are seen as red flags. If a book simply includes the words devil and witch, it's enough to cause these people to file a complaint" (West, 1988, p. 111). She points out that even The Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900) was attacked in Tennessee for portraying witches in too positive a fashion.

Following in the footsteps of C. S. Lewis, I also would like to defend the fairy tale and its other fantasy relatives. Instead of a genre that threatens our children, fantasy is fundamentally the most important kind of story to share with them. I can best support this premise by offering an answer-perhaps a challenge—to each of the major objections to fantasy stories. Though there are a variety of complaints, most seem to fall into four categories.

Psychological Fantasy

There are adults who fear that fairy tales and fantasy will lead children to be somehow out of touch with reality, that they will be less likely to distinguish fact from fancy if they are read too many fairy stories. "Do fairy tales teach children to retreat into a world of wish-fulfillment—'fantasy' in the technical psychological sense of the word—instead of facing the problems of the real world?" asks C. S. Lewis (1980, p. 214). Of course not, he concludes, and goes on to say that realistic "school stories" written for young readers are far more likely to cause problems:

I do not mean that school stories for boys and girls ought not to be written. I am only saying that they are far more liable to become "fantasies" in the clinical sense than fantastic stories are. And this distinction holds for adult reading too. The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real victim of wishful reverie does not batten on The Odyssey , The Tempest , or The Worm of Ouroboros : he [or she] prefers stories about millionaires, irresistible beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches, and bedroom scenes—things that really might happen, that ought to happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance. For, as I say, there are two kinds of longing. The one is an askesis, a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease.                               (Lewis, 1980, p. 215)

In fact, according to eminent child psychologist Bruno Bettleheim (1977), children deprived of a rich fantasy life are more likely to search for a magical means of coping with the realities of daily living:

Many young people who today suddenly seek escape in drug-induced dreams, apprentice themselves to some guru, believe in astrology, engage in practicing "black magic," or who in some other fashion escape from reality into daydreams about magic experiences which are to change their life for the better, were prematurely pressed to view reality in an adult way.                                         (p. 51)

Fairy tales and fantasy are prescriptions for mental health, not disease-causing agents. "Myth making is essential in gaining mental health, and the compassionate therapist will not discourage it," says Rollo May (1991), the world-renowned psychiatrist. "Indeed, the very birth and proliferation of psychotherapy in our contemporary age were called forth by the disintegration of our myths" (p. 15). Children denied the opportunity to dream of magical lands and imaginary solutions to terrible problems may be less capable as teenagers and adults of coping with harsh or troubling realities.

For example, coping devices may act like the safety valve on the boiler of a steam engine and have helped many a child (and adult) deal with stress. A small child, for instance, is completely controlled by an adult world—told when to eat, when to sleep, what to wear. But in fairy tales, it is often the youngest son or daughter or the weak, seemingly less able character, rather than parents or other power figures, who wins the day: Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, or the youngest son in Grimm's "The Water of Life." Children vicariously vent frustrations in healthy ways by subconsciously identifying with such heroes. They also are given a sense of hope about their ultimate abilities to succeed in the world (Bettleheim, 1977). Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963) mirrors just such a process occurring in the life of a child. Max, banished to his room without any supper, is filled with rage and is helpless to change his lot. He channels his anger and frustration into a wild fantasy, in which he travels "to where the wild things are." All powerful, Max tames the terrible beasts and becomes "king of all wild things" until his anger is properly vented, and then he misses the good things about home. Sendak creates a marvelous story in the fairy tale tradition and at the same time reveals a bit of truth about the positive attributes of fantasies. Of course, Where the Wild Things Are has been challenged by censors and nervous parents since its publication, partly because the idea of a child defying parental authority by escaping into a dream world seems unhealthy—a negative message to children.

Censors worried about anti-Christian issues in stories also are troubled by the psychological aspects of fantasy. They seem to worry that the escapism of fantasy leads children into the occult or Satanism. Of all the books (adult and children's titles cutting across all genres) reported as challenged or banned by the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom during a period from March 1992 to March 1993, 20% were fantasies for which the complaints included the words anti-Christian, occult, Satanism, or witchcraft (Doyle, 1993). Take, for example, Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Newbery Honor Book, The Headless Cupid (1971).

It is the story of an unhappy step-sibling who awes and frightens her new brothers and sisters by pretending to have mystical powers. Though she is a complete fraud, a few unexplainable ghostly events nevertheless do occur. In 1989 at the Hays (Kansas) Public Library, The Headless Cupid was challenged "because it [ The Headless Cupid ] could lead young readers to embrace Satanism" (Doyle, 1991, p. 37). Again, in 1992, complaints surfaced in the Escondido, California, school system "because it [ The Headless Cupid ] contains references to the occult" (Doyle, 1993, p. 53).

Just as a cry has gone up from many societal watchdogs about violence on television, film, and even in pop music, censors have long protested the violence in many traditional tales. Modern high fantasy stories, the type of fantasy most like fairy tales (such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy or Alexander's Prydain Chronicles ), have suffered similar criticism. Critics suggest that the so-called violent acts in these stories will breed violence in children. However, this supposition is refuted by the work of Ephraim Biblow. Biblow (1973) explains the results of an experimental study which revealed that children with rich fantasy lives (which fairy stories stimulate) who were exposed to a film with aggressive content responded to the experience with a significant decrease in aggressive behavior. "Low-fantasy" children showed no decrease but a tendency toward increased aggression. Furthermore, Biblow's study clearly indicated that children skilled in "fantasy usage," who therefore engage in aggressive fantasies, are less aggressive during play activities and times of confrontation. Note the concluding sentences of Biblow's report:

The low-fantasy child, as observed during play, presented himself as more motorically oriented, revealed much action and little thought in play activities. The high-fantasy child in contrast was more highly structured and creative and tended to be verbally rather than physically aggressive.                                      (1973, p. 128)

Contrary to a popular belief, frequent trips into the land of faerie make for creative thinkers and problem solvers who are less physically aggressive—certainly qualities most parents desire for their children. For instance, many of us remember using "white knight" fantasies to defuse our hostilities, and these fantasies were often patterned on fairy stories. For example, a bully terrorizes you. You are helpless. In your fantasy, you must protect someone more helpless than yourself, but now you have the power to take control. After giving the bully sufficient warning, you soundly thrash him. I, for one, always felt better after this type of daydream and was less apt to vent my anger on innocent victims like siblings or friends.

Still, some detractors may say that the above reasons are not enough to warrant the violence. Perhaps they need to understand the archetypal nature of traditional stories and their modern counterparts, in which characters often represent or symbolize basic human character traits. The padding is pulled away in these stories, and we are allowed to examine the rudiments of human behavior, painted for us in primary colors. the old stories have existed for centuries mainly because they speak to us on a deep level concerning the human experience. Because good and evil are the most basic of human traits, children are concerned from an early age with the ramifications of good and bad behavior. In classic fantasy stories, there are few gradations of good and bad-the evil characters are truly evil and cannot be swayed toward good. Likewise, the pure in heart remain pure. These stories, then, are a study in justice, or, as Huck, Hepler, and Hickman (1993) put it: "Poetic justice prevails; the good and the just are eventually rewarded, while the evil are punished. This appeals to the child's sense of justice and his moral judgment" (p. 309).

Kohlberg's stages of moral development describe the young child as being in the "Premoral Stage" (up to about 8 years), which basically means that "the child believes that evil behavior is likely to be punished, and good behavior is based on obedience or the avoidance of evil implicit in disobedience" (Lefrancois, 1986, p. 446). According to Bettleheim (1977), the evil person meeting a well-deserved fate in the fairy tale satisfies a child's deep need for justice to prevail. Sometimes this means destroying the evil altogether. Author and literary critic G. K. Chesterton told the story of some children with whom he saw Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird . They were unhappy because there was no "Day of Judgment" for the wicked character. His clear understanding of children's moral development elicited this deeply meaningful response from Chesterton: "For children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy" (quoted in Tolkien, 1966, p. 66). A study conducted with first-grade students supports Chesterton's observation. When asked to choose a preferred ending to "Little Red Riding Hood" from three variations of the tale, the children selected the ending in which the wolf was made to suffer the most (Yolen, 1981). The children demanded that the villain pay dearly for his crimes.

I think it is important to examine exactly what elements are labeled as violent in fairy tales and in quality works of modern fantasy. Take one of the bloodier fairy tales, Grimm's version of "Cinderella," for example. Both truly wicked stepsisters mutilate themselves (trimming heel and cutting off toe) so that the slipper might fit. Only the blood reveals their treachery. Later, the birds peck out their eyes. Yet, the tale very simply and compactly describes each violent act. We don't read of viscous fluid streaming down faces or blood spurting on walls and floors. That's the stuff of slasher horror movies, sensationalism designed to titillate, not a careful comment on justice.

The better works of modern high fantasy handle violence in the same manner. In the final book of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, the arch villain Arawn Death-Lord is confronted for the first time. He shape-shifts into the form of a serpent, but nevertheless is destroyed. Note the controlled images Alexander gives of Arawn's violent death:

… Taran swung the flashing sword with all his strength. The blade clove the serpent in two…. A horrified gasp came from Eilonwy. Taran looked up as the girl pointed to the cloven serpent. Its body writhed, its shape blurred. In its place appeared the black-cloaked figure of a man whose severed head had rolled face downward on the earth. Yet in a moment this shape too lost its form and the corpse sank like a shadow into the earth; and where it had lain was seared and fallow, the ground wasted, fissured as though by drought. Arawn Death-Lord had vanished.                    (Alexander, 1968a, p. 256-257)

Violence in stories also appears to compound the complaints of those who see fantasy as anti-Christian. C. S. Lewis's immortal classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), was challenged in 1990 in the Howard County, Maryland, Public Schools because of "graphic violence, mysticism and gore" (Doyle, 1991, p. 46). The sacrifice of the great lion, Aslan, who represents Christ in this Christian allegory, is probably the most violent and gory scene, evoking images of the crucifixion from the New Testament . But the charge of "mysticism" combined with that of "graphic violence" relegates Lewis's allegory to the realm of the occult.

Frightening for Young Children

Related to violence is the fright factor of fantasy stories, particularly the fairy tales. For instance, many parents worry that the original Grimm's version of "Snow White" or "Cinderella" will cause their young children to have nightmares or other sorts of distress. However, dangerous story elements in fairy tales, such as wicked witches or dragons, are far removed in both time and place from the lives of children; therefore these tales prove much less frightening than realistic stories of danger that focus on real-life fears (Smith, 1989). Well-meaning parents often program children to be afraid by telegraphing their anxiety when they assume elements of a story will cause alarm. The truth is that we are unable to predict what will frighten a child in this manner. I was mystified by some of my children being afraid of the dark and others not. Nevertheless, we as parents wish to insulate our children from fear. Yet to completely insulate them may be a disservice, as C. S. Lewis points out:

Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias…. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree…. [However] the second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense…. Since it is so likely they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not bright but darker…. Nothing will persuade me that [a fairy tale] causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel. For, of course, it wants to be a little frightened.                             (Lewis, 1980, p. 216)

An ironic outcome of trying to protect children from fairy tales is that parents may indeed be frightening them instead! Ann Trousdale (1989) tells the story of a friend who only read softened versions of the fairy and folktales to her young daughter. The rendering of "The Three Little Pigs" that she chose eliminated the violent elements found in the original Joseph Jacobs version: The first two pigs were not eaten; the wolf was not boiled alive. Instead, the wolf came down the chimney, burned his derriere, rocketed back up the chimney, and ran off into the distance, never to been seen again. The little girl said, "He's gonna come back," and began to have nightmares. Trous-dale provided a copy of the original version and soon received a letter that said, "Well, we put the Big Bad Wolf to rest" (p. 77). Perhaps this is another example of a child's need for justice to prevail, but it seems even more basic: The evil was destroyed, and thus the threat was eliminated.

What fairy tales provide children is a message of hope, not fear. As Joseph Campbell (1949) suggests, a child who follows "a multitude of heroic figures though the classic stages of the universal adventure" will come to understand "the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes,—and wisdom" (p. 36). Indeed, no matter how dark the path or how bleak the outlook, fairy tales declare that we have an excellent chance of making it through and coming out on top. The happy ending is an essential part of fairy stories.

Jim Trelease (1986) believes that fairy tales simply confirm what children already know or, at least, suspect about the world: It's often a cruel and dangerous place. But fairy tales take children far beyond this grim reality, calling upon their sense of courage and adventure and advising: "Take your courage in hand and go out to meet that world head on" (Trelease, 1986, p. 185). In fact, children who recoil from strong images of danger in fairy tales have the most to gain from the exposure (Smith, 1989).

Fantasy stories targeted by censors as frightening are typically written for younger children, who are deemed to be more easily alarmed. Fairy tales and ghost stories appear frequently on lists of challenged books for young readers. For example, Alvin Schwartz's popular ghost tales, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981), has been challenged repeatedly since its publication. In 1992, challenges were mounted in school districts in Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, and Washington (Doyle, 1993). Even scary poetry for children has been attacked. Jack Pre-lutsky's The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight and Other Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1980) was challenged in 1982 at the Victor Elementary School in Rochester, New York , because it "was too frightening for young children to read" (Doyle, 1991, p. 32). Over the years I have asked my graduate students, who are practicing primary- and intermediate-grade teachers, if Prelutsky's poems have frightened their students. Never have I been told "yes."

Waste of Time

The complaint that fantasy is a waste of time is perhaps the most insidious. This is not a reason books are typically challenged by irate censors. Instead, teachers, librarians, and parents simply may not select works of traditional and modern fantasy. This is a form of what Shannon (1989) describes as covert censorship, an example of which occurred with a librarian at the Boulder (Colorado) Public Library, who placed Norton Juster's (1961) The Phantom Tollbooth in a locked reference collection because she considered it poor fantasy. Fortunately, Juster's book was finally exonerated and released from its prison in 1988 (Doyle, 1991).

The answer to the charge that fairy tales and other fantasy stories should be set aside in favor of more substantial books about the real world is two-fold. First, fantasy fosters creativity.

Poet Kornei Chukovsky (1968) writes of his experiences in Russia at a time when the Soviets proposed eliminating folk and fairy tales from education. In 1929 he stopped to tell Baron von Munchausen stories to children in a sanatorium. Uniformed overseers rushed forward to stop the reading of such "trash," explaining that books for children must not be fairy tales "but only the kind that offer most authentic and realistic facts" (p. 115). Chukovsky reasoned with them to no avail that, "Fantasy is the most valuable attribute of the human mind and should be diligently nurtured from earliest childhood" (pp. 116-117). He points out that even Lenin understood this: "It is incorrect to think that fantasy is useful only to the poet…. It is useful even in mathematics—even differential and integrated calculus could not have been discovered without it. Fantasy is a quality of the highest importance" (p. 117).

Please recall that Ephraim Biblow's (1973) study showed "high-fantasy" children to be "more highly structured and creative" (p. 128). In fact, many scientists have credited scientific advancement to the creative seeds sown by fairy stories, fantasy, and science fiction novels. "Imagination," said Einstein, "is more important than knowledge" (quoted in Yolen, 1981, p. 63). Einstein's predecessor, renowned British physicist John Tindale, understood well the power of imagination:

Without the participation of fantasy … all our knowledge about nature would have been limited merely to the classification of obvious facts. The relation between cause and effect and their interaction would have gone unnoticed, thus stemming the progress of science itself, because it is the main function of science to establish the link between the different manifestations of nature, since creative fantasy is the ability to perceive more and more such links.                 (quoted in Chukovsky, 1968, p. 124)

The second of this two-fold answer is that children have an undeniable need for childhood fantasies. Chukovsky (1968) also tells of a leading Russian educator who "did everything in her power to protect her son from fairy tales" (p. 118) but soon discovered that he had begun to create his own fantasies, "as if to make up for the fairy tales of which he had been deprived" (p. 119). Alexander (1968b) maintains that one of fantasy's greatest gifts is its ability to foster a capacity for believing. Interesting many young people in anything seems impossible because they have never valued anything, never developed a capacity for believing anything is really worthwhile. But if the capacity to believe is once developed, it is never lost. "Whether the object of value is Santa Claus or Sunday school , the Prophet Elijah or Arthur, the Once and Future King, does not make too much difference. Our values and beliefs can change. The capacity remains" (Alexander, 1968b, p. 388).

I was taught this truth by my own daughter. When Heather was barely 4, I decided that the Santa Claus myth should no longer be propagated in our household. I had been influenced by those voices of reason: Don't lie to your children! Don't adulterate the true meaning of Christmas! I called Heather to me and told her that Santa was a game; he wasn't real. Then I stressed the true message of Christmas. Heather's eyes were wide when I asked, "Do you understand what I'm telling you?" "Yes," she answered, and the deed was done.

A few nights later it was Christmas Eve, and Heather's eyes were even wider. She was so excited she was near blastoff. "Santa's coming! Get the cookies! Get the milk!" What is this? I thought. Heather is an intelligent child. Surely she understands better than this. Then it dawned on me: Heather's need to believe had superseded the idiocy of her father. She continued to believe in Santa Claus until she reached that age when disbelief seems to creep in naturally.

In a society as diverse as ours in the United States and Canada, what may seem clearly offensive to one group of people may be viewed as beautiful and uplifting by another. An example of this sort of dichotomy took place in a nearby school district while I was teaching at a university in Illinois. Parents of a particular religious sect felt that reading Greek myths in the public schools was an evil practice. Believing strongly in the truth of their Christian faith, they considered the Greek myths pagan theology that threatened to undermine the faith of their children. Of course, many others, Christians and non-Christians alike, viewed the Greek myths as remarkable literature that illuminates the history of our world and fosters an understanding of cultures unlike our own. The controversy in Illinois was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident of this sort of censorship aimed at public schools and libraries. In fact, in 1992 at Woodland Park (Colorado) High School, Max J. Herzberg's Myths and Their Meaning (1984) was challenged "because the stories about mythological figures like Zeus and Apollo threaten Western civilization's foundations" (Doyle, 1993, p. 51).

I wonder whether we will let the strident objections of a few change our behavior. Will we avoid fairy tales as nighttime reading for our own children? Or for our kindergarten classes? Or will we choose "dumbed down" versions? Will we dismiss high fantasy or science fiction in our elementary and secondary classrooms? Is it simply easier to choose other books and avoid controversy?

During a time in which educators bemoan the lack of creative and critical thinking in our students, how can we avoid the very books and stories that cultivate imaginative thought? And how, in a time of increased teen suicide and depression in people of all ages, can we ignore Rollo May 's (1991) "cry" for myth? "Many of the problems of our society, including cults and drug addition, can be traced to the lack of myths that give us as individuals the inner security we need in order to live adequately in our day" (p. 9). Fantasy, therefore, is not only safe and acceptable fare for our children; it is a necessity.

There's the wonderful story of the woman who had a young son who was brilliant in mathematics. She had an opportunity to ask Einstein how she should prepare him to achieve greatness in the field. Einstein thought for a moment and said: "Read him the great myths of the past—stretch his imagination." (Huck, 1982, p. 316)

Alexander, L. (1968a). The High King . New York: Holt.

Alexander, L. (1968b). "Wishful Thinking—or Hopeful Dreaming." The Horn Book Magazine , 44, 382-390.

Baum, L. F. (1900; 1970 reissue). The Wizard of Oz . New York: Macmillan.

Bettleheim, B. (1977). The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales . New York: Vintage.

Biblow, E. (1973). "Imaginative Play and the Control of Aggressive Behavior ." In J. S. Singer (Ed.), The Child's World of Make-Believe (pp. 104-128). New York: Academic Press.

Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chukovsky, K. (1968). From Two to Five . Los Angeles : University of California Press.

Doyle, R. P. (1991). Banned Books Week '91: Celebrating the Freedom to Read—A Resource Book . Chicago: American Library Association.

Doyle, R. P. (1993). Banned Books Week '93: Celebrating the Freedom to Read—A Resource Book and Promotion Guide . Chicago: American Library Association.

Herzberg, Max J. (1984). Myths and Their Meaning . Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Huck, C. (1982). "I Give You the End of a Golden String." Theory into Practice , 21, 315-321.

Huck, C., Hepler, S., & Hickman, J. (1993). Children 5: Literature in the Elementary School . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Juster, N. (1961). The Phantom Tollbooth . New York: Random House/Knopf.

Lefrancois, G. R. (1986). Of Children . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Lewis, C. S. (1980). "On Three Ways of Writing for Children." In S. Egoff, G. T. Stubbs, & L. E. Ashley (Eds.), Only Connect (pp. 207-220). New York: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, C. S. (1950). The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe . New York: Macmillan.

May, Rollo. (1991). The Cry for Myth . New York: Delta.

Prelutsky, J. (1980). The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight and Other Poems to Trouble Your Sleep . Illustrated by A. Lobel. New York: Greenwillow.

Schwartz, A. (1981). Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark . Illustrated by S. Gammell. New York: Lippincott.

Sendak, M. (1963). Where the Wild Things Are . New York: HarperCollins.

Shannon, P. (1989). "Overt and Covert Censorship of Children's Books." The New Advocate , 2, 97-104.

Smith, C. A. (1989). From Wonder to Wisdom . New York: New American Library.

Snyder, Z. K. (1971). The Headless Cupid . New York: Atheneum.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1966). The Tolkien Reader . New York: Ballantine.

Trelease, J. (1986). ["The Effect of Fairy Tales on Children"]. Untitled quotation. The Reading Teacher , 40, 185.

Trousdale, A. (1999). "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." Children's Literature in Education , 20, 69-79.

West, M. I. (1998). Trust Your Children: Voices against Censorship . New York: Neal-Schuman.

Yolen, J. (1981). Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie, and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood . New York: Philomel.

Mark I. West (essay date winter 1999)

Author responses to the censorship of children's literature, nancy garden (essay date november 1994).

SOURCE: Garden, Nancy. "Banned: Lesbian and Gay Books Under Fire." Lambda Book Report 4, no. 7 (November 1994): 11-13.

[ In the following essay, Garden—author of the young adult novel Annie on My Mind— surveys American censorship challenges made against works of children's literature, particularly works that acknowledge homosexuality .]

My eyes were barely on the road, because I was imagining the cover of my young adult novel, Annie on My Mind (FSG) curling, blackening, melting, as flames consumed it.

Farfetched fantasy? No. My book was burned last fall by religious fundamentalists in Kansas City , Missouri. Since then, it has been banned in a school district there, and is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by several kids and their parents.

There's nothing like a censorship attempt against one's own book to sensitize one to similar attempts against others, and to the issue of censorship in general.

According to Judith Krug, Director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, there were 40 reported challenges (complaints) to or outright bannings of gay books (adult and children's) in 1991, 64 in 1992, 111 in 1993, and 56 from January, 1994 to July 15, 1994. A little arithmetic will show you that so far this year's figure is comparable to last year's. Krug estimates that the incidents her office hears about represent at most only a quarter of the actual ones; most are never reported. Michael Willhoite's picture book Daddy's Roommate (Alyson) was the most challenged book—of all books, not just gay book, and not just children's book—in 1993 and so far maintains that position in 1994. The third most challenged in 1993 was Leslea Newman's Heather Has Two Mommies (also Alyson). [Gay book challenges have continued into the 21st century. For example, three books with gay content, two of them for kids, appeared on ALA's list of the ten most frequently challenged books in 2003–4.]

Promoting Homosexuality?

Kids' books have always been prime targets for censors; protecting "innocent" and "impressionable" minds from "evil ideas" is a popular pastime of people—some sincere but others politically motivated—on the religious right. Daddy's Roommate , said challengers in North Carolina , "promotes a dangerous and ungodly lifestyle from which children must be protected." Promote is a key word used not only in challenges to individual books but also in those states with proposed legislation or ballot initiatives seeking to deny expenditure of public funds for materials on homosexuality for kids, or seeking to deny kids access to such materials.

But I write gay YAs because of the appalling suicide rate among gay adolescents, not to "promote" homosexuality, and because of the loneliness and confusion most gay kids face as they struggle to discover, understand, and accept themselves. Michael Willhoite, who writes for younger kids, told me, "I wrote Daddy's Roommate for kids of gay parents because their lives were not being addressed…. Children need to see their lives reflected in their literature."

Leslea Newman expresses a similar view. "[The subject] resonated with me as a Jew, also…. Nothing reflected my reality in picture books when I was a child…. If I have an 'agenda,' it's that every child in the country should be proud of who they are and what their family is."

Jacqueline Woodson, whose forthcoming book, From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (Scholastic) is about an African-American boy whose mother falls in love with a white woman, says, "My goal is … to show the one queer kid in class that he or she isn't all alone—to show the one black kid that, too."

I wish it were possible to convey to would-be censors that writing about something isn't the same as promoting it!

Howard Reeves, who's an editor at Hyperion in New York, says "The very idea [of censorship] is revolting. The worst is this guy in Queens"—Frank Borzellieri, chair of the District 24 School Board in Queens, NY, who tried unsuccessfully last spring to ban all multicultural books from the schools. His effort was reminiscent of the one in 1992 banning the Rainbow Curriculum, which included Heather and Daddy's , and led to the firing of Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez. Sasha Alyson of Alyson Publications told me that was his worst censorship experience. "The potential was so huge," he said; "a real precedent. The biggest school system in the country saying we'll address gay issues—and then backing down."

Authors Threatened

Some campaigns against gay books for kids that fall short of actual censorship are equally alarming—as are threats against authors of gay books. "I'm going to go right on burning your books!" the minister who burned Annie shouted at me when I visited Kansas City last spring. Worse, I recently heard about an author who was threatened with an end to his picture book career if he published a gay anthology on which he was working. After Jacqueline Woodson's new book was mentioned in Out magazine, a clergyman "warned" his congregation against it. Woodson then got letters from 32 sixth graders saying in effect that they'd never buy any more of her books and Wood-son's publisher ran into distribution and book club difficulties. "In the beginning," said Woodson, "I didn't know if they [Scholastic] were on my side…. [But] they wrote a wonderful letter of support. They're going to stand behind the book."

Woodson's editor, Dianne Hess, echoes this. "The company is 100% behind Jacquie's new book," she told me, and pointed out that the flap "wasn't real censorship."

Not "real censorship" either, but equally unsettling is the fact that, according to Diane Wachtell of the New Press, some suburban stores have refused to stock her company's YA anthology Growing Up Gay , and an educational materials catalog has refused to offer it. And also disturbing is an experience Cristina Salat had with her manuscript for Living in Secret (Bantam) about a girl who is kidnapped from her father by her lesbian mom and her mom's lover. "Before Bantam took it," says Salat, "a big house was interested in it for a movie, if I cut the lesbians and anything to do with race. So I didn't do it, and they didn't do it." That's a hard decision for an author to face, especially when it's her first book.

Library Battleground

A hard-fought attempt at actual censorship was levied recently against the fairy tale collection The Duke Who Outlawed Jelly Beans by Johnny Valentine (Alyson) and other Alyson books in Dayton, Ohio. According to Mark Willis, Community Relations Manager for the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library, last fall a parent who discovered that the stories in Duke involved kids with same-sex parents taped a handwritten note to the book, saying "Warning: This book contains homosexual themes." Then, says Willis, "She alerted the media, who interviewed a lot of people and ran a series on the situation at 6 and 11 two nights in a row." The leader of a small Christian sect, Spirit of Life Christian Center, who Willis said holds an annual Halloween book-burning, urged his followers to complain about the book—and that set off a brouhaha involving angry phone calls and the distribution of a flyer accusing the library of making pornography available to kids. The library sent out some complaint forms, and got about 12 back; most respondents admitted that they hadn't read the book. Library staff then reviewed all the Alyson children's books they had and voted to keep them; the would-be censors appealed, and eventually, after noisy public meetings, the library's Board of Trustees unanimously supported the staff's decision.

Most libraries have specific policies about complaints, and those that do usually have an easier time dealing with them. Ellen Fader, who's Public Library Consultant of the Library Services Division for the State of Oregon, says "Virtually every Oregon public library that's had a challenge has had a policy in place." In 1988–1989 (the library's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30), Fader's office documented 4 challenges to gay adult and kids' books. In '89-'90, 3; in '90-'91, 2; in '91-'92, also 2. In '92-'93, the year that Ballot Measure 3 hit Oregon, the figure jumped to 35—44% of the year's total challenges.

This year—July 1, 1993–June 30, 1994—there were only 6 documented challenges to gay books in Oregon, so it appears that things have calmed down a little there. But since conservatives in Oregon gathered enough signatures last summer for a ballot measure prohibiting the expenditure of government funds on anything that "promotes" homosexuality, that could be the calm before the storm, even if, as may have happened by now, the court has ruled against it. "The catch," says Fader, "is that anything that doesn't decry homosexuals would be considered promoting."

The Boston Public Library, says Joanne Goodman, children's librarian at the Field's Corner branch, "has no written policy on censorship." Their unwritten policy, she explains, is that "people are responsible for censoring themselves. Parents should select what their kids read," and the rationale for not having a written policy is that "we'd be stuck with it…. This way we can be more flexible. We listen to complaints, and they [those who complain] can put it in writing." A parent recently complained that Isabelle Holland's The Man without a Face (Lippincott) is "horrible and disgusting and shouldn't be on the shelves," Goodman says. "We told him we don't censor, and told him he could put his complaint in writing and send it to the main library. He didn't. Most people don't pursue it. I think the thing to do is to listen to people."

Most people in the literary community agree that no one has the right to censor anyone, even though one may want to. As Judith Krug points out, if one cares deeply about one's own value system, one is, at least potentially, a censor. Leslea Newman adds, "Once any form of censorship is okay, [gay people] will be the first to be censored…. The answer is to protect the First Amendment but to fight like hell when something's expressed that you don't believe in."

Publishers Facing Pressure

As Michael Thomas Ford, formerly an editor at Macmillan and now freelancing, pointed out last February in the trade magazine Publishers Weekly , even among gay or gay-sympathetic publishers, there seems to be a certain amount of resistance to publishing gay kids' books. This also bothers David Gale, now an editor at Simon and Schuster, who worked for a time on Marion Dane Bauer's new YA anthology Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence (HarperCollins). "A lot of [publishers] don't buy gay books because they say there's no market for them," Gale said. "Gay books require extra work—more than just doing the book and giving it to regular channels."

"Gay books are the black books of the 90s," Mike Ford points out. "Editors say 'We'll publish this because it's gay. It's the PC thing to do.'—or they'll say 'We can't do this because it's gay.'"

Susan Korman, Cristina Salat's editor at Bantam Books for Young People, brings up an interesting peripheral point about book clubs , which represent a large part of the sales of many children's publishers, and which, especially at the middle grade level, turn away from anything to do with sex. "There will definitely be some resistance," she said, "to selling [ Living in Secret ] to a book club." I asked her if that would influence Bantam in acquiring a book. "No," she said. "If it was a good book and we believed the author had a career, it wouldn't make us reject it."

What about self-censorship on the part of the authors? Surely that's one of the most dangerous by-products of attacks on books. Everyone I talked to resists it—but many find it hard.

"The way [censorship] affects us is in our pocket-books," says Cristina Salat, "until we're financially secure…. I want to do this full time, and it's very hard…. I can refine informational details, but I can't change a character once it's come to me."

"I'm doing an adult book now, and it's so much easier," Jacqueline Woodson told me. "I think a lot before I sit down to write a YA book."

Two-Edged Sword

The popular notion, of course, is that censorship increases sales. "Terrific!" was the first response of a number of my writer friends when I told them Annie on My Mind had been burned. "Wonderful! Think of the books you'll sell."

Well, okay, I did think of that, a little, and it's true that I was told all the bookstores in Kansas City were soon sold out of Annie . Although I haven't seen any rise in my royalties as a result, it is nice that people who wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to Annie have read it and have apparently been affected positively by it.

But even though that can be "the silver lining in the cloud," as Sasha Alyson puts it, it doesn't mean publishers or authors can afford to shy away from fighting it when it occurs.

"The author has to be willing to go out there and refute what's being said," feels Cristina Salat, and Jacqueline Woodson says, "I don't believe censorship is good for anyone…. It's going to impact on people who haven't got their stuff together yet, who aren't published. The publisher is going to censor new stuff…. I want there to be other books out there like mine."

Mike Ford called the increase in sales that censorship can bring "a two-edged sword…. If it gets a book out there and gets people to read it, I guess that's a good thing. But if [a book is] read just because it's banned, it isn't so good. To write or publish a book so it'll be banned or controversial is dumb, and has nothing to do with art." But, he went on, publishing a book because you believe in it even though it's going to be banned "is an act of courage."

The Front Lines

Publishers and writers are often the last to know when a book is challenged. First to know, though, are the librarians. They're the ones who face the angry patrons, who replace and repair the books removed or damaged by people who decide to take matters into their own hands, and who sometimes even lose their jobs because of censorship issues. And yet many of them fight tirelessly to keep controversial books—our books—available, and to educate the public about the threat that censorship represents.

Cathi Dunn MacRae, YA librarian at the Boulder, Colorado, Public Library, has an advisory board of middle and high school students who were so horrified to learn about book banning that they were inspired to write a program call "Don't Read This!" which includes information on censorship, book talks on challenged books, and skits—including one featuring Daddy's Roommate . They've performed the program a number of times, despite the fact that four schools cancelled bookings after seeing the script, and despite threats of disruption. Having their play about censorship censored and threatened rocked many of the students. "It was a neat experience," says MacRae, "because the kids were learning [about censorship] first hand."

The Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearing House, for which Ellen Fader is Coordinator, issues an annual report on challenges in Oregon and tries to help libraries and schools deal with them. They also provide consulting services and workshops about intellectual freedom. Organizations like the American Library Association, People for the American Way, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Coalition Against Censorship, the American Civil Liberties Union , and others, are all doing their part—but that doesn't mean the literary community can afford to leave all the work to them.

Fighting Back

Perhaps we, as queers, are uniquely equipped to fight the efforts against our books. As victims of homophobia, we know firsthand the ignorant, narrow, illogical and controlling thinking that leads to censorship.

How can we fight it?

"By not giving in to it," says David Gale, and, adds Mark Willis, through "a lot of education" and by showing people that "if they could ban everything that offends someone there wouldn't be much left." Sasha Alyson points out, "It's important for people to show up at their library hearings and be heard." Michael Willhoite urges us to write and illustrate "books that are so good they are their own defense," and Cristina Salat suggests "Buy stuff you think is controversial to show the publishers that it sells. And keep putting it out there."

"The Christian right has come together," says Jacqueline Woodson. "We have to do the same. We can't say 'I'm going to make a lot of money.' We have to think of ourselves as a community and come together and right this now…. We can't be selfish and think of personal gain."

The pre-Stonewall fight was hard on many levels, but it looks as if the post-Stonewall-25 fight is going to be even harder. Our enemies are more organized now, and sneakier. They are attacking us on many fronts—and one of them is censorship of books for children and young adults. Make no mistake: this is not a trivial scrap. It is an early battle in what must not become a full-fledged war.

However, in early August, the U.S. Senate sounded a preliminary death knell to future gay books for kids—and sex education, AIDS education, and counseling on matters of sex and sexuality as well. Following in the footsteps of action taken by the House earlier this year, Republicans Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire and Jesse Helms of North Carolina proposed an amendment under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would deny federal money to any school whose programs, books, materials or counseling has "the purpose or effect of encouraging or supporting homosexuality as a positive life style alternative." This amendment passed 63-36. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., MA) and Sen. James Jeffords (R., VT) successfully offered a milder amendment stipulating that the federal money can be denied only if it is to be used "to directly promote [note word "promote"] or encourage sexual activity, whether heterosexual or homosexual." This one passed 99-0.

The original House amendment to the Act, offered earlier this year by Rep. Mel Hancock (R., MO), was similar to Smith-Helms. Before the Senate vote, however, it was revised by Rep. Jolene Unsoeld (D., WA) to say federal funds may not be used directly to "promote"—there's that word again—homosexuality—so Sen. Edward Kennedy's amendment is similar to the final House amendment, although the House version apparently doesn't include heterosexuality.

As we go to press a House-Senate conference committee had replaced the anti-gay language with Senator Kennedy's proposal, but the final outcome remains uncertain. But regardless of the outcome of this legislation, it reflects a dangerous trend on the part of the federal government , in favor of, if not actual government censorship, government sanction for keeping gay-positive materials (and materials having to do with sex education in general) out of the schools—for there is much room for interpretation regardless of which amendment holds, and it's clear that the word "promote" is usually interpreted by rightists simply to mean "present." This measure, therefore, is likely to have an impact on publishers and writers. Some schools, one would hope, would resist; federal money accounts for only 6-15% of most public schools' funds. But others may not be able to risk losing money if they try to do the lifesaving work of helping gay students. It behooves us, as members of the literary community, and as gay people concerned with the difficulties of our youth, to protest this act and be alert to its dangerous pro-censorship, anti-free speech implications.

Judy Blume (essay date June-July 1999)

SOURCE: Blume, Judy. "Places I Never Meant to Be: A Personal View." American Libraries 30, no. 6 (June-July 1999): 62-7.

[ In the following essay, Blume—author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and one of the most banned children's writers in America—offers her personal thoughts about the nature and effects of literary censorship .]

When I was growing up I'd heard that if a movie or book was "Banned in Boston" everybody wanted to see it or read it right away. My older brother, for example, went to see such a movie— The Outlaw , starring Jane Russell—and I wasn't supposed to tell my mother. I begged him to share what he saw, but he wouldn't. I was intensely curious about the adult world and hated the secrets my parents, and now my brother, kept from me.

A few years later, when I was in 5th grade, my mother was reading a novel called A Rage to Live by John O'Hara, and for the first time (and, as it turned out, the only time) in my life, she told me I was never to look at that book, at least not until I was much older. Once I knew my mother didn't want me to read it, I figured it must be really interesting!

So, you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when, as a junior in high school, I found John O'Hara's name on my reading list. Not a specific title by John O'Hara, but any title. I didn't waste a minute. I went down to the public library in Elizabeth, New Jersey , that afternoon—a place where I'd spent so many happy hours as a young child, I'd pasted a card pocket on the inside back cover of each book I owned—and looked for A Rage to Live . But I couldn't find it.

When I asked, the librarian told me that book was restricted . It was kept in a locked closet and I couldn't take it out without written permission from my parents.

Aside from my mother's one moment of fear, neither of my parents had ever told me what I could or could not read. They encouraged me to read widely. There were no "young adult" novels then. Serious books about teenagers were published as adult novels. It was my mother who handed me To Kill a Mockingbird and Anne Frank 's Diary of a Young Girl , when they were first published.

By the time I was 12 I was browsing in the bookshelves flanking the fireplace in our living room where, in my quest to make sense of the world, I discovered J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye , fell in love with the romantic tragedies of Thomas Hardy and the Bront? sisters, and overidentified with Marjorie Morningstar.

But at the Elizabeth Public Library the librarian didn't care. "Get permission in writing," she told me. When I realized she was not going to let me check out A Rage to Live I was angry. I felt betrayed and held her responsible. It never occurred to me that it might not have been her choice.

At home I complained to my family and that evening my aunt, the principal of an elementary school , brought me her copy of A Rage to Live . I stayed up half the night reading the forbidden book. Yes, it was sexy, but the characters and their story were what kept me turning the pages. Finally, my curiosity (about that book, anyway) was satisfied. Instead of leading me astray, as my mother must have feared, it led me to read everything else I could find by the author.

What Is Censorship Anyway?

All of which brings me to the question What is censorship? If you ask a dozen people you'll get 12 different answers. When I actually looked up the word in The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia I found this definition: "[The] official restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order." My thesaurus lists the following words that can be used in place of ban (as in book banning): Forbid. Prohibit. Restrict . But what do these words mean to the stories they choose to tell? And what do they mean to the books they choose to read?

I began to write when I was in my mid-20s. By then I was married with two small children and desperately in need of creative work. I wrote Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret right out of my own experiences and feelings when I was in 6th grade. Controversy wasn't on my mind. I wanted only to write what I knew to be true. I wanted to write the best, the most honest books I could, the kinds of books I would have liked to read when I was younger. If someone had told me then I would become one of the most banned writers in America, I'd have laughed.

When Margaret was published in 1970 I gave three copies to my children's elementary school but the books never reached the shelves. The male principal decided on his own that they were inappropriate for elementary school readers because of the discussion of menstruation (never mind how many 5th- and 6th-grade girls already had their periods). Then one night the phone rang and a woman asked if I was the one who had written that book. When I replied that I was, she called me a communist and hung up. I never did figure out if she equated communism with breast development or religion.

In that decade I wrote 13 other books: 11 for young readers, one for teenagers, and one for adults. My publishers were protective of me and didn't necessarily share negative comments about my work during those years. They believed if I didn't know some individuals were upset by my books, I wouldn't be intimidated.

Of course, they couldn't keep the occasional anecdote from reaching me: the mother who admitted she'd cut two pages out of Then Again, Maybe I Won't rather than allow her almost 13-year-old son to read about wet dreams. Or the young librarian who'd been instructed by her male principal to keep Deenie off the shelf because in the book, Deenie masturbates. "It would be different if it were about a boy," he'd told her. "That would be normal."

The stories go on and on but really, I wasn't that concerned. There was no organized effort to ban my books or any other books, none that I knew of, anyway. The '70s were a good decade for writers and readers. Many of us came of age during those years, writing from our heart and gut, finding editors and publishers who believed in us, who willingly took risks to help us find our audience. We were free to write about real kids in the real world. Kids with feelings and emotions, kids with real families, kids like we once were. And young readers gobbled up our books, hungry for characters with whom they could identify, including my own daughter and son, who had become avid readers. No mother could have been more proud to see the tradition of family reading passed on to the next generation.

Then, almost overnight, following the presidential election of 1980, the censors crawled out of the woodwork, organized and determined. Not only would they decide what their children could read but what all children could read. It was the beginning of the decade that wouldn't go away, that still won't go away almost 20 years later. Suddenly books were seen as dangerous to young minds. Thinking was seen as dangerous, unless those thoughts were approved by groups like the Moral Majority , who believed with certainty they knew what was best for everyone.

So now we had individual parents running into schools, waving books, demanding their removal—books they hadn't read except for certain passages. Most often their objections had to do with language, sexuality, and something called "lack of moral tone."

Those who were most active in trying to ban books came from the "religious right" but the impulse to censor spread like a contagious disease. Other parents, confused and uncertain, were happy to jump on the bandwagon. Book banning satisfied their need to feel in control of their children's lives. Those who censored were easily frightened. They were afraid of exposing their children to ideas different from their own. Afraid to answer children's questions or talk with them about sensitive subjects. And they were suspicious. They believed if kids liked a book, it must be dangerous.

Too few schools had policies in place enabling them to deal with challenged materials. So what happened? The domino effect. School administrators sent down the word: Anything that could be seen as controversial had to go. Often books were quietly removed from school libraries and classrooms or, if seen as potential troublemakers, were never purchased in the first place. These decisions were based not on what was best for the students, but what would not offend the censors.

Restricted Shelves

I found myself at the center of the storm. My books were being challenged daily, often placed on restricted shelves (shades of Elizabeth, New Jersey , in 1955) and sometimes removed. A friend sent me a pamphlet called How to Rid Your Schools and Libraries of Judy Blume Books . Never once did the pamphlet suggest the books actually be read. Of course I wasn't the only target across the country; the Sex Police and the Language Police were thumbing through books at record speed, looking for any words or phrases that, taken out of context, could be used as evidence against them.

Puberty became a dirty word, as if children who didn't read about it wouldn't know about it, and if they didn't know about it, it would never happen.

The Moral Tone Brigade attacked Blubber (a story of victimization in the classroom) with a vengeance because, as they saw it, in this book evil goes unpunished. As if kids need to be hit over the head, as if they don't get it without having the message spelled out for them.

I had letters from angry parents accusing me of ruining Christmas forever because of a chapter in Super-fudge , called "Santa Who?" Some sent lists showing me how easily I could have substituted one word for another. Meanie for bitch, darn for damn, nasty for ass . More words taken out of context. A teacher wrote to say she blacked out offending words and passages with a felt-tip marker. Perhaps most shocking of all was a letter from a 9-year-old addressed to Jew dy Blume telling me I had no right to write about Jewish angels in Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself .

My Worst Moment

My worst moment came when I was working with my editor on the manuscript of Tiger Eyes (the story of a 15-year-old girl, Davey, whose beloved father dies suddenly and violently). When we came to the scene in which Davey allows herself to feel again af-ter months of numbness following her father's death, I saw that a few lines alluding to masturbation had been circled. My editor put down his pencil and faced me. "We want this book to reach as many readers as possible, don't we?" he asked.

I felt my face grow hot, my stomach clench. This was the same editor who had worked with me on Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Then Again, Maybe I Won't; Deenie; Blubber; Forever —always encouraging, always supportive. The scene was psychologically sound, he assured me, and delicately handled. But it also spelled trouble. I got the message. If you leave in those lines, the censors will come after this book. Librarians and teachers won't buy it. Book clubs won't take it. Everyone is too scared. The political climate has changed.

I tried to make a case for why that brief moment in Davey's life was important. He asked me how important? Important enough to keep the book from reaching its audience? I willed myself not to give in to the tears of frustration and disappointment I felt coming. I thought about the ways a writer brings a character to life on the page, the same way an artist brings a face to life on canvas—through a series of brush strokes, each detail adding to the others, until we see the essence of the person. I floundered, uncertain. Ultimately, not strong enough or brave enough to defy the editor I trusted and respected, I caved in and took out those lines. I still remember how alone I felt at that moment.

What effect does this climate have on a writer? Chilling. It's easy to become discouraged, to second-guess everything you write. There seemed to be no one to stand up to the censors. No group as organized as they were; none I knew of, anyway. I've never forgiven myself for caving in to editorial pressure based on fear, for playing into the hands of the censors. I knew then it was all over for me unless I took a stand. So I began to speak out about my experiences. And once I did, I found that I wasn't as alone as I'd thought.

My life changed when I learned about the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) (www.ncac.org) and met Leanne Katz, the tiny dynamo who was its first and long-time director. Leanne's intelligence, her wit, her strong commitment to the First Amendment and helping those who were out on a limb trying to defend it, made her my hero. Every day she worked with the teachers, librarians, parents, and students caught in the cross fire. Many put themselves and their jobs on the line fighting for what they believed in.

In Panama City , Florida, junior high school teacher Gloria Pipkin's award-winning English program was targeted by the censors for using young adult literature that was depressing, vulgar, and immoral, specifically I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier and About David by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

A year later, when a new book selection policy was introduced forbidding vulgar, obscene, and sexually related materials, the school superintendent zealously applied it to remove more than 65 books, many of them classics, from the curriculum and classroom libraries. They included To Kill a Mockingbird, The Red Badge of Courage, The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights , and Of Mice and Men . Also banned were Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear , The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night .

Gloria Pipkin fought a five-year battle, jeopardizing her job and personal safety (she and the reporter covering the story received death threats) to help reinstate the books. Eventually, the professional isolation as well as the watered-down curriculum led her to resign. She remains without a teaching position.

Claudia Johnson, Florida State University professor and parent, also defended classic books by Aristophanes and Chaucer against a censor who condemned them for promoting "women's lib and pornography." She went on to fight other battles—in defense of John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men , and a student performance of Lorraine Hansberry 's Raisin in the Sun .

English teacher Cecilia Lacks was fired by a high school in St. Louis for permitting her creative-writing students to express themselves in the language they heard and used outside of school every day. In the court case that followed, many of her students testified on their teacher's behalf. Though she won her case, the decision was eventually reversed and at this time Lacks is still without a job.

Colorado English teacher Alfred Wilder was fired for teaching a classic film about fascism, Bernardo Ber-tolucci's 1900 .

And in Rib Lake, Wisconsin, guidance counselor Mike Dishnow was fired for writing critically of the board of education's decision to ban my book Forever from the junior high school library. Ultimately he won a court settlement, but by then his life had been turned upside down.

And these are just a few examples.

This obsession with banning books continues as we approach the year 2000. Today it is not only Sex, Swear Words, and Lack of Moral Tone—it is Evil, which, according to the censors, can be found lurking everywhere. Stories about Halloween, witches, and devils are all suspect for promoting Satanism. Romeo and Juliet is under fire for promoting suicide; Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time , for promoting New Age -ism. If the censors had their way it would be good-bye to Shakespeare as well as science fiction. There's not an ism you can think of that's not bringing some book to the battlefield.

What I worry about most is the loss to young people. If no one speaks out for them, if they don't speak out for themselves, all they'll get for required reading will be the most bland books available. And instead of finding the information they need at the library, instead of finding the novels that illuminate life, they will find only those materials to which nobody could possibly object.

Some people would like to rate books in schools and libraries the way they rate movies G, PG, R, X, or even more explicitly. But according to whose standards would the books be rated? I don't know about you, but I don't want anyone rating my books or the books my children or grandchildren choose to read. We can make our own decisions, thank you. Be wary of the censors' code words— family friendly; family values; excellence in education . As if the rest of us don't want excellence in education, as if we don't have our own family values, as if libraries haven't always been family-friendly places!

And the demands are not all coming from the religious right. No … the urge to decide not only what's right for their kids but for all kids has caught on with others across the political spectrum. Each year Huckleberry Finn is challenged and sometimes removed from the classroom because, to some, its language, which includes racial epithets, is offensive. Better to acknowledge the language, bring it out in the open, and discuss why the book remains important than to ban it. Teachers and parents can talk with their students and children about any book considered controversial.

I gave a friend's child one of my favorite picture books, The Stupids Step Out and was amazed when she said, "I'm sorry, but we can't accept that book. My children are not permitted to use that word. Ever. It should be changed to The Sillies Step Out ." I may not agree, but I have to respect this woman's right to keep that book from her child as long as she isn't trying to keep it from other people's children. Still, I can't help lamenting the lack of humor in her decision. The Stupids Step Out is a very funny book. Instead of banning it from her home, I wish she could have used it as an opportunity to talk with her child about why she felt the way she did, about why she never wanted to hear her child call anyone stupid . Even very young children can understand. So many adults are exhausting themselves worrying about other people corrupting their children with books, they're turning kids off to reading instead of turning them on.

In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced—writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices—and all because of fear. How many have resorted to self-censorship? How many are saying to themselves, "Nope … can't write about that. Can't teach that book. Can't have that book in our collection. Can't let my student write that editorial in the school paper."

The new book I'm editing—a collection of original stories by censored writers—is dedicated to Leanne Katz to commemorate a life spent trying to prevent voices from being silenced. (Leanne died in 1997.) It is our way of thanking her and NCAC for their hard and valuable work, which continues today under the able direction of Joan Bertin and her small staff of dedicated coworkers. All the royalties from the sale of this book will go directly to NCAC to benefit their work. The authors to be included in the book are Norma Fox Mazur, Julius Lester , Rachel Vail, Katherine Paterson, Jacqueline Woodson, Harry Mazer, Walter Dean Myers, Susan Beth Pfeffer, David Klass, Paul Zindel , Chris Lynch, and Norma Klein.

Aside from being good storytellers, what these writers have in common is that somewhere along the way their work has been challenged by an individual or group wanting to forbid, prohibit , or restrict the books they have written. In some cases the censors have been successful; in others, sanity has prevailed. Following each story the writer shares his/her personal experiences and feelings about censorship. Remember, if you ask a dozen people what censorship means, you'll get 12 different answers .

The bottom line is, censorship happens, often when you least expect it. It's not just about the book you may want to read but about the book your classmate might want to read. It's not just about teachers and librarians at other schools who might find themselves in job-threatening situations—it could happen at your school. Your favorite teacher, the one who made literature come alive for you, the one who helped you find exactly the book you needed when you were curious, or hurting, the one who was there to listen to you when you felt alone, could become the next target.

A word of warning to anyone who writes or wants to write: There is no predicting the censor. No telling what will be seen as controversial tomorrow. I've talked with writers who have told me, "Oh … I don't write the kinds of stories you do. I write for younger children. My work will never be attacked," only to find themselves under fire the next day.

So write honestly. Write from deep inside. Leanne used to say "It's your job to write as well as you can, Judy. It's my job to defend what you've written."

But Leanne couldn't do it on her own. No one can. It's up to all of us.

FURTHER READING

Briggs, Julia. "Reading Children's Books." Essays in Criticism 39, no. 1 (January 1989): 1-17.

Discusses issues relevant to children's literature, paying particular attention to the evolving role of censorship within the genre.

Hunt, Peter. "Censorship." In Children's Literature , pp. 255-58. Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Offers a broad examination of censorship within thechildren's literature genre.

Khan, Iram. "The Censorship of Canadian Children's Literature." Canadian Content (online journal) http://www.canadiancontent.ca/issues/0699censor.html (June 1999).

Presents a critical overview of censorship challenges made against children's literature in Canada.

MacLeod, Anne Scott. "Censorship and Children's Literature." In American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , pp. 173-86. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1994.

Discusses various challenges and censorship intiatives enacted against works of juvenile literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Steinle, Pamela Hunt. "The Catcher Controversies as Cultural Debate." In In Cold Fear: "The Catcher in the Rye," Censorship Controversies, and Postwar American Character , pp. 106-39. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2000.

Examines the various reasons cited for withdrawing J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher n the Rye from school district curricula in the 1950s through the 1980s.

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Censorship and Literature

The Oxford English Dictionary defines censorship as “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.”1 There is at least a two-fold meaning in this definition: first, certain factors give rise to censorship including obscenity, security, etc.

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The earliest reference to “censor” appears as “one of two magistrates of ancient Rome” ( Oxford English Dictionary [ OED ]), who in addition to taking the census (that is, the registration of citizens, originally for tax purposes), supervised public morals and censured the population ( Columbia Encyclopedia 2008). The English words “censor” and “census” are from the Latin censere , which means to appraise, value, judge, consider or assess; “censure” is from the Latin censura , meaning judgment. During the era in which these terms originated, Cato the Elder (234–149 b.c.e.) undertook a vigorous campaign to stem the infiltration of Greek culture (Knowles 2006).

According to the OED , the first modern use of “censor” applied to people whose job it was to ensure that “books, journals, plays, etc.” were free from anything “immoral, heretical or offensive to the State,” and arose in relation to the theater. That is when the “Lord of Misrule” or the “Abbott of Unreason” evolved into the Stage Censor (c. 1555–83). A related term, “bowdlerize,” also arising out of censorship of theatrical productions, commemorates Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), who published a book of Shakespeare’s plays—with all sexual or vulgar references removed (McArthur 1998).

The earliest use of the word “censorship” in the context of children’s literature developed in tandem with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s eighteenth-century concept of “the natural child” as innocent and in need of protection. The only book Rousseau allowed his hypothetical boy protégé in Émile (1762) was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719); ironically, Sarah Trimmer, in her Family Magazine (1778–89), attacked bawdy passages in Defoe’s novel, as well as those in Perrault’s fairy tales, as inappropriate for children. Over the last two hundred years, children’s books targeted for censure reflect changing ideas about childhood and notions of suitability. What constitutes “censorship,” and whether limiting access to a book violates children’s right to read or protects them from danger, has been a longstanding matter of debate.

In dealing with sensitive and complex issues, there is no simple resolution to the dynamic tension between the need to protect children and the willingness to trust the relationship between a writer and a reader. British psychologist Nicholas Tucker, in The Child and the Book (1990), notes that occasionally a child may respond adversely to a story, but, while “situations like this are bound to happen sometimes, they can best be modified by discussion afterwards rather than censorships before.” Similarly, Kornei Chukovsky (1963), in his study of Russian children “protected” from myths and fairy tales, says censorship does not work because children create their own fantasy stories and worlds in place of literature.

Attempts to suppress dime novels in the United States in the 1860s or penny dreadfuls in Britain (which later evolved into series books) were unsuccessful despite claims that they would encourage children and working-class youth to engage in criminal behavior. Foster’s Education Act of 1870 was also opposed by some on the grounds that encouraging mass literacy would lead to crime and madness (Mullin 2003). Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent (1954) attacked comic books as a negative influence.

Prior to the rise of “new realism” in the 1960s, the general consensus about children’s literature was that difficult topics such as death, racial conflict, or sexual permissiveness were taboo and therefore simply did not appear (Postman 1994). Topics often censored include sexual content, language, violence, homosexuality, race, and religion (Whelan 2009). By the twentieth century, censorship of children’s literature developed a specialized vocabulary of its own, including words such as “challenge,” “quiet-censorship,” “covert-censorship,” and “self-censorship.”

“Challenge” takes the form of an official written complaint to a school or library (Hopkins 1996), though the American Library Association (2009) estimates that the number of challenges reported represent only a quarter of the actual total number, and also reports that the Harry Potter series ranks as the most challenged book series of the twenty-first century.

“Quiet censorship” refers to publishers of children’s literature who, in anticipation of negative reaction or unwanted pressure from the public, exercise censorship outside of the public eye (Hunt 1997). Publisher censorship can occur at any stage of the process: prior to acceptance, in the final negotiations prior to publication, when the book is re-released in paperback, when illustrations are changed, or when the book is translated. Twice Beatrix Potter was pressured to delete material: in The Tailor of Gloucester (1903), a rat drinks from a black bottle (it was censored), and in The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907), Tom’s clothes come off (she refused the changes).

Other actors in the quiet censorship arena include individuals, groups, or communities, who, once a book is published, may pressure publishers, public institutions (such as libraries or schools), or even commercial enterprises (such as book and video stores) to suppress, remove, or limit access to material (Hopkins 1996). These unofficial censors may attempt to enforce certain values by purging schools and libraries of “controversial” books or circulating lists of “objectionable” books and authors. Many librarians attest to acts of rogue or “covert censorship” in which angry readers white out, black out, tear out, razor out, or ink out what they deem to be offensive portions—as in copies of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen (1970) where such readers cover up the young boy’s genitals.

Authors also practice self-censorship, making decisions about what might be acceptable in a children’s book—sometimes, as Craig Howes (2004) says, “working against free expression [and thus becoming] self-silencing.” Three children’s book writers—Lois Lowry, Gillian Rubinstein, and Erik Haugaard—confess to occasional self-censorship, sometimes out of economic concerns or fear of publisher’s remarks or possible attacks from pubic censors. As Lowry put it, “I began to consider each bad word that appeared from my… word processor, and to question whether it needed to be there” (Nilsen and Bosmajian 1996).

Conversely, children’s literature has historically provided a venue for resistance to censorship. During the McCarthy era in the United States, writing for children became a safe refuge for creative people on the left who were able to work under pseudonyms and evade censorship (Mickenberg 2006). In The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (1988), Nat Hentoff highlights censorship issues by examining The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which he believes is a useful tool for educators (in part because of its language) in exploring racism, slavery, and the moral dilemmas of its era.

Since librarians or teachers can easily be fired for censorship reasons (Kantor 2007), often a single complaint can frighten them into removing an item immediately. In addition to the fear of receiving a complaint or of corrupting children, teachers censor material to avoid frightening or saddening children, or to avoid introducing controversy into their classroom, thus steering clear of Eve Bunting’s Fly Away Home (1991) (dealing with homelessness), or Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach (1991) (a family struggles for financial security) (Wollman-Bonilla 1998). One of the most common objections to children’s books is “inappropriate language,” often labeled obscene or pornographic. On these grounds, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), and Katherine Paterson’s The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978) have all faced censorship.

While censorship of a book based on its gender bias, sexism, or racism is more accepted by society, this approach has led to certain books being censored for embodying “outmoded” attitudes representative of the period in which they were written. For example, Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo (1899), Travers’s Mary Poppins (1934), Hugh Lofting’s The Story of Dr Dolittle (1920), and Hergé’s Tintin au Congo (1931) have all been banned due to negative representations of Africans or African-Americans (MacLeod 1983). Books attacked for their political message include George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945; communism) and Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac’s Keepers of the Earth (1988; environmentalism, native spirituality) (Karolides 1999; Zimmerman 2000). Stories like these are attacked because of perceptions that, even within a sociohistorical context, negative attitudes toward multiculturalism, the role of women, the physically challenged, racial, social, or sexual minorities, or religion are no longer acceptable.

Some have sought to ban children’s literature on moral grounds. Books targeted for promoting antisocial behavior include Dav Pilkey’s Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997; bad behavior, toilet humor), Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy (1964; lying and window-peeping), Paul Zindel’s The Pigman (1968; lying, swearing, drinking, drug abuse, disrespect for authority and property), Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974; mob rule, masturbation), S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967a; gangs), Alice Childress’s A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich (1982; drug addiction, swearing, Black militancy), Trina Schart Hyman’s Caldecott-winning Little Red Riding Hood (1983; there is a bottle of wine in Little Red Riding Hood’s basket), and Isabelle Holland’s Heads You Win, Tails I Lose (1973; drug abuse). Safety concerns have also resulted in objections to books depicting young children engaged in dangerous behaviors such as turning on a stove, climbing a ladder, or walking alone. Books that have been banned due to depictions of violence include Fitzhugh’s Bang, Bang You’re Dead (1986) and R. L. Stine’s Wizards, Warriors and You series (1985). Those opposed to these works argue instead for the use of ethical heroes (see Chetwin in Lehr 1995).

In a 2009 survey of librarians (Whelan 2009), 87 percent said the main reason they avoid certain books is because they include sexuality or sex education. This content seldom appears in literature for young children but is constantly surfacing in works for young adults and includes controversial themes such as: masturbation and sexuality, as in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970), Deenie (1973), and Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971); teenage pregnancy, as in Josephine Kamm’s Young Mother (1968); conception, as in Norma Klein’s Naomi in the Middle (1974); nonmarital sex, as in Klein’s Mom, the Wolf Man, and Me (1972); infanticide, as in Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993); abortion, as in Klein’s It’s Not What You Expect (1973); contraception, as in Blume’s Forever (1975); AIDS, as in Mary Kate Jordan, Abby Levine, and Judith Friedman’s Losing Uncle Tim (1989); and, of course, premarital sex, as in Blume’s Deenie and Forever, Klein’s It’s Okay If You Don’t Love Me (1977), and Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat series (1989–2005). Teachers and administrators are often pressured to remove these books from schools. In a related but less sensitive topic, nudity or body parts are sometimes labeled as “obscene”; recently, for example, there have been objections to Susan Patron’s Newbery Medal winner The Higher Power of Lucky (2006), in which a rattlesnake bites the main character’s dog’s “scrotum.”

Homosexuality, often a focus of censorship, was cited by 47 percent of censoring librarians in the aforementioned survey (Whelan 2009). Books cited for this reason include John Knowles’s A Separate Peace (1959), Michael Willhoite’s Daddy’s Roommate (1990), Aaron Fricke’s Reflections of a Rock Lobster (1981), A. J. Homes’s Jack (1990), Deborah Hautzig’s Hey Dollface (1978), and Anne Heron’s Two Teenagers in Twenty (1993).

Some images or references in literature may inspire a hostile reaction from people with particular religious convictions. Pullman’s The Golden Compass (1995) was pulled from Catholic schools when the popular film adaptation was released in theatres (Abley 2007). One of the most contested issues in educational circles today is the labeling of Wicca, native spirituality, and other earth-based approaches to spirituality as witchcraft, the occult, or satanic worship (Barry 1992; “Books Involving Witchcraft” 1994). Due to their “occult” themes, Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia (1977) was once the most frequently challenged, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books quickly became the most protested ever with 472 complaints. Some groups believe that any teaching about non-Western religions (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.), or even yoga or meditation, equate to witchcraft, cultish activity, or attempts to convert children to a religion (Shariff and Manley-Casimir 1999). Others believe that devils and witches are a real force for evil in the world, and argue against any literature featuring them; stories that feature magic, fairies, and ghosts have been attacked for similar reasons. In recent decades, despite strong opposition (Blair 1996), groups of self-declared witches have begun to defend their right to expression and have criticized authors of stories where witches do not appear in a favorable light, including Roald Dahl’s The Witches (1983) (Barry 1992).

Today, questions of who can write or speak for whom often lead to charges of censorship. Many censors on the left either are sympathetic to or come from embattled cultural or racial minorities who feel they are already threatened—sometimes physically, sometimes socially. Concern about negative stereotypes leads naturally to the question of “cultural appropriation”: should a non-Chinese interpret Chinese folktales? Should Europeans or their descendants try to retell native legends? Lissa Paul (2000), for example, attacks books such as Jan Bourdeau Waboose’s Morning on the Lake (1997) for “boutique multiculturalism” (to use Stanley Fish’s [1997] term), to explain how ethnicity is watered down and designated as “too foreign” for children. The difficult questions in censorship come to the fore more forcefully when children are given books written for adults, with mature themes and difficult choices. For example, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) and David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars (1994) were both written with adult audiences and sensibilities in mind. Also, it is important to note that banned books often become even more attractive to readers. As Peter Hunt (1997), who gets the final word on the subject, notes: “The censorship of children’s literature is a texture of paradoxes: between benevolent control and fearful repression; between common-sense attitudes to words and meanings and necessary freedom of interpretation; between a ‘trivial’ subject and a far-from-trivial reaction to it—and, as we have seen in contemporary Britain, between the overt and the covert.”

113 Censorship Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for censorship topics for research papers or essays? The issue is controversial, hot, and definitely worth exploring.

🏆 Best Censorship Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

🚫 internet censorship essay topics, 📍 censorship research questions, 💡 easy censorship essay topics, 😡 controversial censorship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about censorship, 🙅 censorship topics for research paper.

Censorship implies suppression of public communication and speech due to its harmfulness or other reasons. It can be done by governments or other controlling bodies.

In your censorship essay, you might want to focus on its types: political, religion, educational, etc. Another idea is to discuss the reasons for and against censorship. One more option is to concentrate on censorship in a certain area: art, academy, or media. Finally, you can discuss why freedom of expression is important.

Whether you need to write an argumentative or informative essay on censorship, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ve collected best internet censorship essay topics, title ideas, research questions, together with paper examples.

• Pros and Cons of Censorship of Pornography This is due to the fact that pornography is all about exploitation of an individual in maters pertaining to sex as well as violence exercised on females by their male counterparts.
• Need for Internet Censorship and its Impact on Society The negative impacts of internet have raised many concerns over freedom of access and publishing of information, leading to the need to censor internet.
• Literature Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The issues raised in the novel, Fahrenheit 451, are relevant in contemporary American society and Bradbury’s thoughts were a warning for what he highlighted is happening in the contemporary United States.
• Censorship and “13 Reasons Why” by Jay Asher Though the novel “13 Reasons Why” by Jay Asher could be seen as inappropriate for young adults, attempting to censor it would mean infringing upon the author’s right to self-expression and the readers’ right to […]
• ”Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury: Censorship and Independent Thinking By exploring the notion and censorship and how it affects people, the author draws parallels with the modern world of his time and the increasing impact of government-led propaganda. Censorship is a recurring theme that […]
• Censorship and the Arts in the United States The article titled “Censorship versus Freedom of Expression in the Arts” by Chiang and Posner expresses concerns that the government may illegitimately censor art to avoid corruption of morals and avoid subversion of politics.
• Censorship in Advertising One of the most notorious examples is the marketing of drugs; pharmaceutical companies have successfully convinced a significant number of people that drugs are the only violable solution to their health problems.
• Censorship, Its Forms and Purpose The argument here is that censorship is a means being used by conservative persons and groups with distinct interests to make life standards so difficult and unbearable for the minors in the society, in the […]
• Self-Censorship of American Film Studios In this sense, the lack of freedom of expression and constant control of the film creations is what differs the 20th-century film studios from contemporary movie creators.
• Twitter and Violations of Freedom of Speech and Censorship The sort of organization that examines restrictions and the opportunities and challenges it encounters in doing so is the center of a widely acknowledged way of thinking about whether it is acceptable to restrict speech.
• Censorship by Big Tech (Social Media) Companies Despite such benefits, these platforms are connected to such evils as an addictive business model and a lack of control over the type of content that is accessible to children users.
• Freedom of Speech: Is Censorship Necessary? One of the greatest achievements of the contemporary democratic society is the freedom of speech. However, it is necessary to realize in what cases the government has the right to abridge the freedom of self-expression.
• Censorship on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The main protagonist of the novel is Guy Montag, a fireman whose job like others, is to burn books without questioning the impact of his decision.
• Art and the Politics of Censorship in Literature The inclusion of the novel in classroom studies in the early 1960s especially 1963, spurred criticisms due to the issues of contention addressed by the novel.
• The Issue of Parents’ Censorship Filtering the sources of information by the adults is like growing the plants in the greenhouse, hiding them from all the dangers of the surrounding world.
• Art and the Politics of Censorship The final act of the film is the most vital of all the scenes because the subject of the dispute elucidates the disparities between the director, producer, and censors.
• Censorship of Pornographic Material Effects of pornography are broad and the consequences are hazardous as it affects the moral fiber of the society. Censorship of explicit and pornographic material should be encouraged as we cannot imagine the catastrophe that […]
• China Intellectual Property Research on Censorship To prove the importance of the China’s intention to set the internet censorship, it is necessary to mention about rapid expansion of online technologies has made the internet one of the effective means of communication […]
• Pornography and Censorship in Society Admittedly, sexual explicitness has risen to new levels in the last few years, due in part to changing attitudes toward sexual behavior and the desire for more personal flexibility in the making of moral decisions.”The […]
• Censorship, Holocaust and Political Correctness In this paper, we will focus on exploring different aspects of formal and informal censorship, in regards to a so-called “Holocaust denial”, as we strongly believe that people’s ability to express their thoughts freely is […]
• Censorship: For the People, or for Controlling The main aim for this art in our societies is to restrain and conceal beneath the disguise of defending the key fundamental public amenities that are; the State, families and churches.
• Censorship in the United States Thus, the rationale of censorship is that it is necessary for the protection of the three basic social institutions; the family; the religion; the state.
• Balance of Media Censorship and Press Freedom Government censorship means the prevention of the circulation of information already produced by the official government There are justifications for the suppression of communication such as fear that it will harm individuals in the society […]
• Music Censorship in the United States Censorship is an act of the government and the government had no hand in the ban of Dixie Chicks songs, rather it was the fans boycotts that led to a ban on airplay.
• Modern Means of Censorship In his article Internet Censorship neither by Government nor by Media, Jossey writes about the importance of online political communication during the elections and the new level of freedom provided by the Internet.
• Art and Media Censorship: Plato, Aristotle, and David Hume The philosopher defines God and the creator’s responsibilities in the text of the Republic: The creator is real and the opposite of evil.
• Censorship in China: History and Controlling This is especially so when the government or a dominant religious denomination in a country is of the view that the proliferation of a certain religious dogma threatens the stability of the country or the […]
• Creativity and Censorship in Egyptian Filmmaking The intention of the media laws and other statutes censoring the film industry is to protect the sanctity of religion, sex, and the overly conservative culture of the Egyptian people.
• Internet Censorship and Cultural Values in the UAE Over the past few years, the government of the UAE introduced several measures, the main aim of which is to protect the mentality of people of the state and its culture from the pernicious influence […]
• Censorship of Films in the UAE Censorship of films in the United Arab Emirates is a major ethical dilemma as reflected in the case study analysis because the practice contravenes the freedom of media.
• Societal Control: Sanctions, Censorship, Surveillance The submission or agreeing to do according to the societal expectations and values are strong under the influence of both official and informal methods of control.
• Censorship Impacts on Civil Liberties In the US, the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of expression; it is one of the main democratic rights and freedoms.
• Internet Censorship: Blocking and Filtering It is the obligation of the government to protect the innocence of the children through internet censorship. In some nations, the government uses internet blocking and filtering as a method to hide information from the […]
• Media Censorship: Wikileaks Wikileaks just offers the information which is to be available for people. Information is not just a source of knowledge it is the way to control the world.
• Censorship on the Internet Censorship in the internet can also occur in the traditional sense of the word where material is removed from the internet to prevent public access.
• Censorship of Social Networking Sites in Developing Countries Censorship of social media sites is the control of information that is available to users. The aim of this paper was to discuss censorship of social media sites in third world countries.
• Government Censorship of WikiLeaks In my opinion, the government should censor WikiLeaks in order to control information content that it releases to the public. In attempting to censor WikiLeaks, the US and Australian government will be limiting the freedom […]
• Censorship defeats its own purpose Is that not a disguised method of promoting an authoritarian regime by allowing an individual or a group of individuals to make that decision for the entire society The proponents of SOPA bill may argue […]
• Censorship and Banned Books Based on what has been presented in this paper so far it can be seen that literary freedom is an important facilitator in helping children develop a certain degree of intellectual maturity by broadening their […]
• Ethics and Media: Censorship in the UAE In this case, it is possible to apply the harm principle, according to which the task of the state is to minimize potential threats to the entire community.
• Aspects of Internet Censorship by the Government When one try to access a website the uniform resource locator is checked if it consists of the restricting keyword, if the keyword is found in the URL the site become unavailable.
• Censorship vs. Self-censorship in the News Media Assessment of the appropriateness of the mass media in discharging the above-named duties forms the basis of the ideological analysis of the news media.
• Should Censorship Laws Be Applied to the Internet? On the other hand, the need to control cyber crime, cyber stalking, and violation of copyrights, examination leakage and other negative uses of the internet has become a necessity.
• Internet Censorship in Saudi Arabia The censorship is charged to the ISU, which, manage the high-speed data links connecting the country to the rest of the world.
• Media Control and Censorship of TV The second type of control imposed on the media is the control of information that may put the security of a country at risk.
• Chinese Censorship Block Chinese People from Creativity With the development of the country’s first browser in the year 1994 and subsequent move by the government to “provide internet accessing services” in the year 1996, the use of the technology began to develop […]
• Censorship for Television and Radio Media This paper seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of censorship with the aim of determining the extent to which content on broadcast media can be censored. A good example of a situation in which moral […]
• Empirical Likelihood Semiparametric Regression Analysis Under Random Censorship
• An Argument Against Internet Censorship in United States of America
• The Lack of Freedom and the Radio Censorship in the United States of America
• Censorship as the Control of What People May Say or Hear, Write or Read, or See or Do
• An Analysis and Overview of the Censorship and Explicit Lyrics in the United States of America
• The First Amendment and Censorship in the United States
• Advertiser Influence on The Media: Censorship and the Media
• The Freedom of Speech and Censorship on the Internet
• Censorship Necessary for Proper Education of Guardian
• An Argument in Favor of Censorship on Television Based on Content, the Time Slot and the Audience
• Music Censorship and the Effects of Listening to Music with Violent and Objectionable Lyrics
• An Analysis of Controversial Issue in Censorship on the Internet
• Consistent Estimation Under Random Censorship When Covariables Are Present
• Music Censorship Is a Violation of Constitutional and Human
• Censorship Should Not Be Imposed by the Government
• Internet Censorship and Its Role in Protecting Our Societys Addolecent Community
• Against Internet Censorship Even Pornography
• The Concept of Censorship on College Campuses on the Topic of Racism and Sexism
• Cyber-Frontier and Internet Censorship from the Government
• Creative Alternatives in the Issues of Censorship in the United States
• Asymptotically Efficient Estimation Under Semi-Parametric Random Censorship Models
• Chinese and Russian Regimes and Tactics of Censorship
• An Overview of the Right or Wrong and the Principles of Censorship
• An Argument Against the Censorship of Literature in Schools Due to Racism in the Literary Works
• The History, Positive and Negative Effects of Censorship in the United States
• Burlesque Shows and Censorship Analysis
• Importance of Free Speech on the Internet and Its Censorship
• Historical Background of the Libertarian Party and Their Views on the Role of the Government, Censorship, and Gun Control
• Internet Censorship and the Communications Decency Act
• Monitoring Children’s Surfing Habits Is a Better Way Than Putting Censorship Over the Internet
• A History of Censorship in Ancient and Modern Civilizations
• Censorship, Supervision and Control of the Information and Ideas
• Importance of Television Censorship to the Three Basic Social Institutions
• An Argument That Censorship Must Be Employed if Morals and Decency Are to Be Preserved
• Is Internet Censorship and De-Anonymization an Attack on Our Freedom
• Censorship or Parental Monitoring
• What Does Raleigh’s Letter Home and the Censorship Issue Tell You About Raleigh?
• Does Censorship Limit One’s Freedom?
• How Darwin Shaped Our Understanding of Why Language Exists?
• How Does Censorship Affect the Relationship with His Wife?
• Why and How Censorship Lead to Ignorance in Young People?
• What Is the Impact of Censorship on Children?
• How Does Media Censorship Violate Freedom of Expression and Impact Businesses?
• Censorship or Responsibility: Which Is the Lesser of Two?
• How Can Censorship Hinder Progress?
• How Musical Censorship Related to the Individual?
• How The Media Pretends to Protect Us with Censorship?
• What Is the Impact of Censorship on Our Everyday Lives?
• Is There China Internet Censorship Against Human Rights?
• Can Ratings for Movies Censorship Be Socially Justified?
• Censorship: Should Public Libraries Filter Internet Sites?
• Does Parental Censorship Make Children More Curious?
• What Are the Arguments for and Against the Censorship of Pornography?
• How Propaganda and Censorship Were Used In Britain and Germany During WWI?
• Should the Chinese Government Ban the Internet Censorship?
• How Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Subverted Censorship and Revolutionized the Politics of LGBT Love in 1928?
• How Modern Dictators Survive: Cooptation, Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression?
• What arguments Were Used to Support or Oppose Censorship in Video Nasties?
• Why News Ownership Affects Free Press and Press Censorship?
• Should Music Suffer the Bonds of Censorship Interviews?
• Why Should Graffiti Be Considered an Accepted from of Art?
• What Is the Connection Between Censorship and the Banning of Books?
• How Does Congress Define Censor and Censorship?
• How Does Censorship Affect the Development of Animations?
• Why Should Internet Censorship Be Allowed?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Adapting Turkish Shakespeares (Edited Volume)

Call for Chapters  

Türkiye has a long tradition of reading, translating, and staging William Shakespeare’s plays, a practice dating back to the pre-Constitution era and persisting in the 21st century. Shakespeare is arguably the most popular foreign writer within Turkish discourse. This enduring interest is evident in the myriad ways his plays and poetry have been adapted and translated. Stage adaptations, particularly those in theatre, opera, and ballet, have been notably popular. To bridge the gap between Turkish readers and Shakespeare, his works have undergone numerous translations and re-translations. They have also been abridged and produced in the form of comics, also providing an important addition to children’s literature. Cinematic versions of his plays have been produced and achieved popularity abroad. Furthermore, the number of multimedia and digital versions of his plays has surged, a trend accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. His plays have made their way to social media, been caricatured, and inspired various pop culture products derived from the setting and/or character names in his plays. Popular lines from his sonnets have permeated Turkish song lyrics. As elsewhere, Shakespeare has also served as a means to voice political dissent and comment on the historical trajectory of the country, reflecting societal shifts towards modernisation, Westernisation, secularisation, and democratisation. His works have also been performed beyond the mainstream theatres of urban centres, echoing the diverse minority and marginalized voices in Anatolia. Additionally, the pedagogical approach to his works has been a focal point for educators and academics seeking innovative methods and materials to deepen Turkish students’ understanding and engagement with Shakespeare in classroom settings. Despite this extensive engagement, this long tradition has remained relatively obscure for the majority of both Turkish and non-Turkish academic and non-academic circles. 

This volume aims to fill this gap by exploring the intricate ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted, translated, domesticated, politicised, and commercialised in Türkiye. For this book, we are looking forward to receiving abstracts for 7,000-word chapters (including Bibliography) that document and critically engage with the impact of Shakespeare adaptations in Türkiye.

Contributors are invited on any of the following aspects:

• Pre-Republic Renditions of Shakespeare
• Post-Republic Adaptations
• Stage adaptations of Shakespeare in Türkiye
• Politicised Shakespeare
• Marginal Shakespeares
• Mediatised Shakespeare
• Shakespeare in İstanbul
• Shakespeare in Anatolia
• Shakespeare in Translation/Re-translation
• Localisation and Domestication of Shakespeare
• Shakespeare on the Turkish Screen
• Teaching Shakespeare
• Shakespeare in Visual Arts
• Turkish audiences and Shakespeare
• Cultural Materialism of Shakespeare in Türkiye
• Shakespeare in Children’s Literature
• Digitised Shakespeare
• Popular Culture Shakespeares
• Shakespeare in Turkish Literature
• Performance history of Shakespeare in Türkiye
• Shakespeare and minorities in Türkiye
• Censorship of Shakespeare’s works in Türkiye
• Turkification of Shakespeare
• Uses of Shakespeare in Modernisation, Westernisation, Secularisation Process of Türkiye
• Trans/cross-cultural adaptations of Shakespeare in Türkiye

Essays might discuss any of these issues either as groups from a macro perspective (looking at chronological, spatial, class, gender, racial, linguistic, translational, ecological, and posthuman continuities or discontinuities) or from a micro perspective and focus on individual play adaptations (but papers should critically engage with these plays without reducing them to reviews).

Please send a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and your recent CV to Turkish Shakespeares ( [email protected] ) before the 30th of September 2024.

We have already contacted two major academic publishers which have shown great interest in the volume.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further queries. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals.

The Editors

Özlem Özmen Akdoğan  is currently a Fulbright postdoctoral visiting scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She works as an Associate Professor Doctor of English at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Türkiye. She received her PhD on the British rewritings of Shakespeare’s plays in the twentieth century from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Türkiye, in 2018. She carried out research for her dissertation at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London with TÜBİTAK scholarship from September 2015 to March 2016. She has publications on twentieth and twenty-first-century adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. She is a member of ESRA (European Shakespeare Research Association). She has presented several papers on Shakespeare adaptation at ESRA and WSC (World Shakespeare Congress) conferences. Her research interests include adaptation studies, British women dramatists, contemporary British dramatists, climate crisis and animal studies, and political drama. She has taught courses on Shakespeare at the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Performing Arts at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University and Department of English at Cappadocia University.

Murat Öğütcü is an Associate Professor Doctor in the English Language and Literature Department at Adıyaman University, Türkiye. He received his PhD degree from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University, Türkiye, in 2016. From August 2012 to January 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is currently working at Adıyaman University, Türkiye. He is the General Editor of the “ Turkish Shakespeares ” Project which aims to introduce texts, productions and research on Turkish Shakespeares to a broader international audience of students, teachers, and researchers. He is also a researcher at the AHRC-funded “ Medieval and Early Modern Orients ” project which aims to contribute to our understanding of the medieval and early modern encounters between England and the Islamic Worlds. He is among the regional editors of the Global Shakespeares Project and the World Shakespeare Bibliography . He is co-editor of Materializing the East in Early Modern English Drama (Bloomsbury, 2023). He has written book chapters and articles on his research interests, including early modern studies, Shakespeare, and cultural studies.

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Censorship in Literature Essay (870 words)

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The subject of censorship is a very controversial one, especially the banning of books. Many people believe they must protect themselves and others from the evils of many classic books and works of art because they can be deemed indecent in one way or another. Many believe that this is absurd and censorship in its current form is a violation of our First Amendment right to free speech. Personally, I align myself with the latter, however I do feel there are occasions where censorship is justifiable.

The censorship of books is a division of censorship that, apart from Internet censorship, receives the most publicity. Banning books is the most popular form of such censorship. Many banned books are literary classics, such as The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, which was listed as the number 6 most challenged or banned book in a list compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1997. This book has been banned from school libraries all over the country because of the main character”s teenage angst, which many feel is too graphic for teenagers, and its profanity.

Profanity, whether it be frequent or a rare occurrence, is a characteristic of many literary classics, as is the use of racial epithets. In the book Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ranking number 2 on the list, an epithet is use many times over to describe the people of color in the book. Now since the book was published in 1885 and such language was common at the time, I do not believe that banning such a book is necessary. An excuse commonly used by advocates of banning books that use graphic language or racial epithets is that they do not want children exposed to it.

It is my belief that since by the time the child is required to read such literature in school, they are at an age where they can distinguish between things that should and should not be said and it is the job of the parents to educate the child that just because they say it in a book does not mean he or she should. Another subject common to banned and censored books is sexuality. An excellent example of a book in question containing sexual content is The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, which ranked number 5 on the ACLU”s list.

Now considering the fact that this frequently banned book is written for young adults of middle and high school age, I”m sure the author included this content, and the often graphic language associated with such content, because it made the book more realistic and possibly because it made the novel more appealing to the age bracket. Fiction is not the only genre faced with banning and censorship. Educational books such as the sex education text It”s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris and The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsmanare under attack because they discuss sex-related topics.

All I have to say about this is sexuality is a fact of life, not some forbidden subject. Adolescents need to know this information so they don”t go off an ruin their life by having a baby while they are in their teens or catching a disease because they didn”t have the information to protect them. Sometimes books are banned or censored for unusual and often ridiculous reasons. An example of such is the banning of Little Red Riding Hood in two California school districts in 1989.

In the story, Little Red Riding Hood is bringing a cake and a bottle of wine to her grandmother”s house. The districts claimed they were concerned because of the use of alcohol in the story. Even the popular children”s” book series Goosebumps, by R. L. Stine, has been challenged across the country by parents and school officials. They say that the book is too scary for kids. I am curious as to why they say this, because I remember reading the books in elementary school, and to my peers and I, they were comedic rather than scary.

By the time a child can read these books, I feel, they are old enough to know that it is just a story and the Goosebumps books are all about getting kids into the fun of reading. As I have said before, there are certainly occasions where censorship is justified. For example, the Kenneth Starr report on President Clinton”s affairs with Monica Lewinsky and the attempts to cover it up is certainly not for kids. Due to its graphic sexual content, I would not be surprised if it was censored extensively or even removed from the Internet sites it is currently on.

I do believe when censorship is used, it must be used with common sense. Instead of banning classic literary works and educational from school libraries and classrooms, classes could possibly discuss why the authors use such language and content in their books. Why ban a good book because it has a few profanities? If censorship must be used to control inappropriate content, it should be used to prevent children from gaining access to materials such as pornography on the Internet rather than the sex-ed book in the school library.

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Censorship in Literature Essay (870 words). (2018, Apr 29). Retrieved from https://artscolumbia.org/censorship-in-literature-45912/

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Hanover County supervisors censor commendation for Girl Scout who fought censorship

The Hanover County Board of Supervisors spent their Wednesday afternoon meeting approving language to honor a handful of Girl Scouts for completing their Gold Award projects, among other items.

But one Girl Scout, who’s project was designed to fight what she sees as censorship in the county’s school system, had her commendation “amended.”

Cold Harbor District Supervisor Michael Herzberg pulled out the proclamation for Hanover County student Kate Lindley from a group of proclamations for Girl Scouts achieving their highest honor.

Lindley’s Gold Award project involved setting up Banned Book Nooks .

It’s an idea she came up with after Hanover County removed over 75 titles from school libraries, claiming they contained “inappropriate language,” “violence” and “sexually explicit content.”

Lindley’s project got media attention, and she’s since grown her project’s collection to over 400 books, giving access to the censored literature where it might otherwise be denied.

You can find out more via Lindley's Instagram account for the project here .

And while her original proclamation language specifically mentions quote “identifying locations where books were available that had been banned by Hanover County Public Schools libraries,” Supervisor Herzberg’s motion led to quote “amending” -Lindley says censoring- that detail along with any other mention of banned books or censorship.

“The Board of Supervisors has bestowed upon me the greatest honor anyone fighting censorship and banning could receive by censoring me and my project,” Lindley said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Hanover County said that items on the consent agenda are quote “always subject to change or amendment” and that’s what happened Wednesday.

And while Lindley is set to graduate in the next few weeks before heading off to college, she plans to attend and receive whatever commendation the board of supervisors is willing to give her.

But she plans to let them know how she feels afterward.

Art and Censorship in Art

This essay about the intricate relationship between art and censorship throughout history and in modern times. It explores how censorship, driven by political, religious, and societal pressures, has sought to regulate artistic expression. From ancient civilizations to the digital age, artists have faced challenges in pushing the boundaries of creativity while navigating the constraints of censorship. Despite these challenges, the essay emphasizes the importance of upholding freedom of expression and supporting artists in their efforts to provoke thought, challenge norms, and shape our understanding of the world.

How it works

Art and censorship have been entwined throughout history, forming a complex tapestry of cultural, political, and social dynamics. From ancient civilizations to modern societies, the tension between artistic expression and censorship has played a significant role in shaping the artistic landscape. While censorship aims to regulate and control what is deemed acceptable or appropriate in art, it often sparks debates about freedom of expression and the boundaries of artistic creativity.

One of the most notable examples of art censorship is the banning of certain works by authoritarian regimes or religious institutions.

Throughout history, rulers and religious leaders have sought to suppress artworks that challenge their authority or beliefs, leading to the destruction of countless masterpieces and the persecution of artists. For instance, during the Renaissance, the Catholic Church censored artworks deemed heretical or blasphemous, such as Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel.

In modern times, censorship in art has taken on new forms with the rise of digital media and the internet. Social media platforms and online forums have become battlegrounds for debates over censorship, with users and governments alike grappling with issues of hate speech, obscenity, and political dissent. The internet has provided artists with new avenues for expression, but it has also exposed them to the risk of censorship and backlash from online communities and authorities.

Despite the challenges posed by censorship, many artists continue to push the boundaries of artistic expression, challenging societal norms and sparking important conversations about censorship and freedom of speech. Art has the power to provoke, inspire, and challenge us, and censorship only serves to stifle this creative energy. By resisting censorship and advocating for freedom of expression, artists can play a crucial role in shaping a more open and inclusive society.

In conclusion, the relationship between art and censorship is a complex and multifaceted one, shaped by historical, cultural, and political factors. While censorship may seek to control and regulate artistic expression, it often leads to debates about freedom of speech and the boundaries of creativity. Despite the challenges posed by censorship, artists continue to push the boundaries of expression, sparking important conversations and shaping our understanding of the world. As we navigate the complexities of censorship in art, it is important to uphold the principles of freedom of expression and support artists in their quest to challenge and inspire us.

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