Some I understand, like Looking for Alaska, which I've heard has highly sexual content. Some make sense, but not really, like Harry Potter. Some are classics, and therefore SHOULD NOT BE BANNED, like The Great Gatsby. Then there are those that just outright make 0 sense to ban, like anything by Dr. Seuss. Why are people this shallow and delicate? It makes no sense! Some children's books that we own have been banned because they are "sexual" or "promote drugs, disobedience, and communism". What the hell?? They were written and published for children! Does anyone else have opinions and/or reasons for these nonsensical bans?

The banning of books is asinine idiocy. Doesn't matter what their content is.

You gonna talk about about books that have been deplatformed by Amazon or are you going to talk about books that got anathemized by a few christian parent groups lol

I don't get the point of the post. It mentions normal books and not books that are ACTUALLY BANNED like Mein Kampf. I am confused. Don't you live in America, the most free country there is?

To Kill a Mockingbird was banned here for the longest time because it was considered racist, even though the moral of the story is racism bad. I believe censoring that book is racist in itself.

When I was graduating high school, we had to pick 20 books to read and talk about. We could choose from ~150 books, including Lolita, Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, The Great Gatsby. Excluding Harry Potter.
I guess every country is different.

When I was graduating high school, we had to pick 20 books to read and talk about. We could choose from ~150 books, including Lolita, Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, The Great Gatsby. Excluding Harry Potter.

Woah, that sounds quite cool, honestly. As for me, I just had to read mostly useless junk.... and far too much of it in high school.

@Georg clarify in what way these books are banned, I cannot get a clear idea of what you mean by "banned" from your post

To Kill a Mockingbird was banned here for the longest time because it was considered racist, even though the moral of the story is racism bad. I believe censoring that book is racist in itself.

It doesn't surprise me, to be fair. I've seen (and keep seeing) this kind of narrative: it's too complicated for kids to understand the situation from the time this book was written, so we should not teach it in school because it gives the wrong idea. I absolutely agree that it is bullshit to ban To Kill a Mockingbird. It's as if somebody banned 1984 because it's anti-democratic. Whoever sanctions such a ban did not really understand the book.
The way I see it is that in some circles, it becomes "racist" just to talk about racism. Frankly, it becomes taboo. That's also the kind of behavior you might see with people insisting that black people should not be identified by their skin color (because acknowledging that a black is black is somehow racist). I think it plays into the picture of the narrative, which desperately tries to gag the public from discussing racism, or race, for that matter. What next, are we gonna pretend systemic racism was never a thing to protect our kids? Sure, let's just cancel WWII from history books while we're at it. Kids today wouldn't understand.

High schooler: I can't wait for college, now I won't have to read young adult horseshit anymore and I can read stuff like Shakespeare

The assigned book for English 101: the hate u give

Edited 2/3/2021 20:46:20

So what have we learned today? America dumb, Netherlands gut.

High schooler: I can't wait for college, now I won't have to read young adult horseshit anymore and I can read stuff like Shakespeare

Eh? we read Shakespeare in high school...
if anything, high school needs more "young adult horseshit" instead of books whose intended audiences certainly aren't children

if anything, high school needs more "young adult horseshit" instead of books whose intended audiences certainly aren't children

Hurr 16 year olds should be reading harry potter because duh shakespeer is 2 hard 2 read hurr

Hurr 16 year olds should be reading harry potter because duh shakespeer is 2 hard 2 read hurr

No one's saying that; you're just putting words in waffle's mouth because you are weirdly committed to your belief but lack the ability to defend it against an actually decent argument.

It honestly sounds to me like your problem is that your own school sucks and teaches below your level, or perhaps you're in the lower-level classes where they give you lame books to try and motivate you to read. I've never even heard of the hate u give, but looking at the book, it seems like it has literary merit although it's clearly written for teenagers and tries to be relatable to them. It doesn't seem like the kind of book you'd read because Shakespeare is too hard; it's the kind you'd read for the same reason people would watch The VVitch instead of Metropolis and Casablanca in modern introductory film classes, to keep them interested and to give them a gentler step up into the concepts.

Honestly I think the people making high school reading lists have way too much of a fetish for "the Classics"; it's not like Dickens was considered sophisticated material in his time. He was innovative, sure, but just reading Dickens and Shakespeare and the like over and over again dulls your reading skills and denies you the chance to build literary analysis abilities. I'd love to swap out Julius Caesar and Great Expectations in a curriculum for, say, Trainspotting and Middlesex.

Maybe you're just not like other kids or something and want to tell us that you're very smart because you can read Shakespeare. In that case, congratulations, you can read.

Does anyone else have opinions and/or reasons for these nonsensical bans?

Karens. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from the Tatmadaw and copy the Karen genocide.

Edited 2/4/2021 23:50:53

Sorry, haven't been able to look for awhile.
By banned, I mean banned from at least one library or school. Tons of books have been banned from school and/or libraries for ridiculous reasons. These include seemingly normal books and books that should be in a school. Some editions of the Webster dictionary have been banned for including some words in the English language. Other books have been banned for producing a negative message, when the book was written to fight that given message. Racism is popular.

Whoever was saying young adult books are good: Please give some examples. To me, they all seem to be crap.
Whoever was saying Shakespeare books are good: No. Just.....no.

Hmmm, if only I could find the cause of this....

Must be cause of famous Western freedom, democracy and the love of free thinking

Please give some examples.

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower
• The Hate U Give
• Scythe

And the rest of these all seem appropriate for 9th grade English: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/50-ya-novels-adults-will-love/

Has any country banned the Quran yet?

I don't think so, but versions the Bible have been banned in places. Spain of all places is where I found.

Whoever was saying young adult books are good: Please give some examples. To me, they all seem to be crap.

My point wasn't about the quality of the books, but about the target audience. Young adult books were written for young adults, and thus will contain elements which will likely interest them more. Of course, a book can be teenager-friendly without necessarily being originally written for them. The point is, many school books are written in a language that is not easy to read and it's easy to get discouraged after a while and simply read the summary found on the internet. I've done that for most school books, and, imo, it's not really that much worse than actually reading the book... you get the main points without all the fancy-shmancy, you could argue it's actually more efficient that way, provided you find a good summary. Obviously, that's not the point; you want the kids to actually read what's given to them. I agree with knyte that people care way too much about classics. They're not always essential/appropriate for school level, and I'm sure some could be moved to college/university and it wouldn't be a great loss. Personally, I think it's more important to find something that is actually interesting to the reader. It was always hard to maintain interest for me in, say, a centuries old, long ass poem, written in archaic language, of which the text makes you believe that the guy who wrote this was high.

Hurr 16 year olds should be reading harry potter because duh shakespeer is 2 hard 2 read hurr
No one's saying that; you're just putting words in waffle's mouth because you are weirdly committed to your belief but lack the ability to defend it against an actually decent argument.

It honestly sounds to me like your problem is that your own school sucks and teaches below your level, or perhaps you're in the lower-level classes where they give you lame books to try and motivate you to read. I've never even heard of the hate u give, but looking at the book, it seems like it has literary merit although it's clearly written for teenagers and tries to be relatable to them. It doesn't seem like the kind of book you'd read because Shakespeare is too hard; it's the kind you'd read for the same reason people would watch The VVitch instead of Metropolis and Casablanca in modern introductory film classes, to keep them interested and to give them a gentler step up into the concepts.

Honestly I think the people making high school reading lists have way too much of a fetish for "the Classics"; it's not like Dickens was considered sophisticated material in his time. He was innovative, sure, but just reading Dickens and Shakespeare and the like over and over again dulls your reading skills and denies you the chance to build literary analysis abilities. I'd love to swap out Julius Caesar and Great Expectations in a curriculum for, say, Trainspotting and Middlesex.

Maybe you're just not like other kids or something and want to tell us that you're very smart because you can read Shakespeare. In that case, congratulations, you can read.

Of course my public school taught a dumbed down reading curriculum, I'm an American lol. Reading the classics doesn't "dull your reading skills and deny you the chance to build literary analysis abilities" I think that's an asinine statement. I'm not against all modern literature and YA, I just think most modern YA is mostly state/corporate/military propaganda. That's a good two paragraphs of material I'd like to interact with but it's just outlandish assumptions and ad hominems. All I can really say in response is that it's ironic you think I'm some pseud because of my tastes when your whole argument is just classics bad moderns good, or your own personal tastes. You're just taking the opposite side on this pointless dialectical. Once again I'm not against all modern literature, I'm against propaganda and the stupid YA industry.