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Reading still dangerous to young minds: Part one

The American Library Association has released its “10 Most Challenged Books of 2005″ list, and though it’s comforting that such immoral tomes as Of Mice and Men and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have finally been deemed acceptable by all of America’s library-card holders, there are still a few vintage titles on the list that might raise a few eyebrows. To make the list, a book must have generated at least one written request in the past year that it be removed from the library system. Such requests inevitably arise from a concern with the book’s sexual content or use of bad language, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone with a basic cable TV subscription could still be calling for the removal of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (third on the list) or Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, which placed fourth. The most challenged book was Robert H. Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, and Sexual Health for its “homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion, and being unsuited to age group.”

Related links:
Read the list on the Library Journal site

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