I am always surprised to see Madeline L'Engle on this list... as well as Judy Blume. Roald Dahl... I mean, I grew up with those authors.

That said, i can see why "The New Joys of Gay Sex" gets complains... but I don't see school librabries stocking that mofo, either.

Roald Dahl wrote some great adult short stories. Were those what you enjoyed reading, Theory? I particularly enjoyed stories like Lamb To The Slaughter ("somehow I think the answer must be right under our nose", as they devour the murder weapon).

But he will probably always be best known for his Willy Wonka stuff.

No, no Lamb to the Slaughter for me. Wanka, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and so forth. Good books. I'd still read them.

parents should give their kids a little credit for being able to sort this stuff out.

the language if all over the school so it's nothing new.

i remember reading an article about books that were banned from christian schools. one of them was The Diary of Anne Frank....because, at one point in the book, she disobeys her parents.

talk about missing the point!

You can free a banned book, too.

Magic the work of satan? Apparently there are a lot of complaints over the Harry Potter books because of the wizardry and magic. I'm not a fan of the Harry Potter books, but its a matter of personal taste, certainly not anything I deem offensive in them.

Mark - I agree with you on the language bit. The same parents complaining probably use those words around their kids.

Theory and TDavid:
My favorite Dahl books were his autobiographical Boy and its sequel Going Solo. He had a very interesting life, which coincided nicely with his gift of storytelling.

Obviously some of these books (like Madonna's tome, for example) are inappropriate for grade-school libraries. That's not a question of freedom, it's a question of common sense and community standards.

The banning comes from both sides of the aisle, too. While once upon a time Huck Finn might have been banned because of, well, I don't know, something ignorant racists thought up, recently it's been banned because of "racist" language that is deemed inappropriate, as documented in this post.

Still, it's hard to imagine some of these. Caged Bird? A thing of beauty. How To Eat Fried Worms? Man, I was very young when I read that. To Kill A Mockingbird? Despite the weirdness of having a child express a very adult point of view at the end of the novel, it should be considered a classic must-read for everybody. I just don't get it.

Then again, I use a Christian home-school currciulum that includes a few of the books in this list, as well as other books with bad words, positive books about other religions, and so on and so forth, and I plan to supplement that with books even they won't touch, so I guess I'm atypical.

A Wrinkle In Time? Man, I loved that book when I was about ten or eleven. It's in my kids' curriculum, too.

Phil, the major gripe with Caged is that Angelou was molested as a child. A lot of people, apparently, don't want their kids to be aware of the topic.

I've argued for Huck Finn many a time with African-American writers, who, surprisingly to me, are sometimes opposed to the book being taught. The problem is usually the person can't get pass the N-word. Once someone does, he or she will 'get' the book. Also, many people, including Klan types, assume Twain was a racist. He wasn't.

Native Americans sometimes protest Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer. He is a stereotype, I suppose. But, I care a lot more about seeing so many drunk Indians on the streets of Portland and Seattle than I do about seeing one in a novel.

The anti-scary book movement tickles me. Heck, Grimm's fairy tales are scary. So, are children's stories from just about every culture. I think it probably serves a useful psychological purpose.

I don't understand how some of these books can be banned! James and the Giant Peach? I read that when I was like 8. I am doing a report right now for school about book banning and censorship (we just finished reading Farenhiet 451), and I did'nt relize how many great books have been banned. I really hope that this hasn't stopped kids from reading some wonderful novels.

Meleah (#10), the label "Banned Books" is scary, but in some cases the only issue that a little school somewhere out there decided to take the book out of the elementary-level library or something.

Note also that book-banners come from the left and the right, so the stereotype most of us have of book-burners doesn't fit.

In the case of James, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that James runs away from his aunts. We don't want very young children encouraged to run away from home, do we?

Depending on the age, I would argue that young children come up with the concept of running away from home long before reading it in a book. Same with many of the other topics explored in most of these books.

I wonder if it is a small number of complaints proportionally that cause books to be removed? I sure hope it's not one or two parents that are over-protective about reading material making issues out of these books. The squeaky wheel thing making changes in the libraries in public school concerns me.