NP Harry Potter and other banned books

[Doug Millison]

Round Up the Usual Suspects: Banned Book Week Starts Saturday

With the arrival of the 19th annual Banned Book Week, which runs September
23-30, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom and the American
Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) have issued two
eye-catching lists.

The first ranks the top 10 most banned/challenged books of 1999 and the
second is the 100 most banned/challenged books of the last decade, viewable
at http://www.ala.org/bbooks/top100bannedbooks.html. It's interesting to
note from the list of the decade's most challenged books that more adults
wanted Harry Potter titles removed from library shelves (the series ranked
#48) than The Anarchist Cookbook (#59), a title that gives step-by-step
directions on building bombs.

Shortly after last year's Banned Books Week, there was such a flurry of
attempts to ban the Harry Potter books that it made J. K. Rowling's books
1999's most challenged books in the nation. The ALA recorded challenges in
13 states by the end of the year.

The top 10 most challenged titles of last year were:

1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, for its focus on wizardry and
magic;
2 Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, for using offensive language and
being unsuited to its intended age group;
3. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1998's "most challenged" fiction
book), for using offensive language and being unsuited to its intended age
group;
4. Blubber by Judy Blume, for offensive language and being unsuited to its
intended age group;
5. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, for offensive language and being
unsuited to its intended age group;
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, for using offensive language and
being unsuited to its intended age group;
7. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, for being too explicit
in the book's portrayal of rape and other sexual abuse;
8. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, for its sexual content;
9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, for sexual content and offensive
language;
10. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, for sexual content and
offensive language.

Topping the ALA's list of the most banned books of the last decade was
Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (HarperCollins). The
decade's top 10 continued with: 2. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite;
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; 4. The Chocolate War by
Robert Cormier; 5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; 6. Of
Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; 7. Forever by Judy Blume; 8. Bridge to
Terabithia by Katherine Paterson; 9. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea
Newman; 10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The top 100 list was
compiled from 5,718 challenges to library materials reported to by the
ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom from 1990-1999.

Judith Krug, the office's director, told PW Daily the number of challenges
has decreased over the last few years (in 1995, the number of reported
challenges was 762, but by 1999 they had declined to 472). But, despite
this decline, Krug reminded, "It's an interesting figure because the list
contains several series like Goosebumps. With series, the figures become
skewed. And, for every complaint we hear about there are between four and
five we don't hear about, what we're reporting is the tip of the iceberg."

"We had a big increase last year in bookstore participation in part because
for the first time we sent out a direct mail flyer to bookstores," Chris
Finan, president of ABFFE told PW Daily. "The number of stores
participating had been around 600 to 700 and we decided we needed to be
more aggressive about marketing. We had a big jump and it has sustained
this year."

As of a week ago, ABFFE had mailed out more than 1,000 Banned Books Week
kits. As for libraries, Krug believes that between 2,000-3,000 libraries
promote the week. "The numbers might be substantially higher because
libraries in systems share materials," she said.

Finan reported some good news. Just yesterday a school board in suburban
Toronto repealed its restriction of in-class reading of the Harry Potter
series.--Kevin Howell

PW Daily for Booksellers from Publishers Weekly
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
http://www.publishersweekly.com
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