Sarah Palin’s List of Books to Ban? Maybe. Maybe Not.

I received this in an email. Allegedly, this list is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board and indicates the books that Sarah Palin requested be removed from the library. Even the Snopes listing that “debunks” the article only says that she wanted to ban the books and mentioned it publicly, but never officially banned any books.  Another article for the Boston Herald claims that no list was actually discussed.  So, obviously, I need to do more research and confirm the truth of this list, but for what it’s worth, here’s the list:

• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Blubber by Judy Blume
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Carrie by Stephen King
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Christine by Stephen King
• Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Cujo by Stephen King
• Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
• Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
• Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Decameron by Boccaccio
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
• Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
• Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• Forever by Judy Blume
• Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
• Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
• Have to Go by Robert Munsch
• Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
• How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Impressions edited by Jack Booth
• In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
• It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
• Lysistrata by Aristophanes
• More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
• My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
• My House by Nikki Giovanni
• My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
• Night Chills by Dean Koontz
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
• One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Ordinary People by Judith Guest
• Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
• Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
• Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
• Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
• Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
• Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Bastard by John Jakes
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
• The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
• The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
• The Living Bible by William C. Bower
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel
• The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
• Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
• Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
• Symbols by Edna Barth

For other angles on this topic, please see the following:

• Salon: Sara Palin and Mark Halperin’s complaints of the “liberal media”
• http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/09/sarah-palin-ban.html
• http://books.google.com/googlebooks/banned/
• http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/06/the-bogus-sarah-palin-banned-books-list/
• http://www.ncac.org/literature/bookcensorshiptoolkit.cfm
• http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5766173&page=1
• http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/sarah-palin-m-2.html
• http://bannedbooksweek.org/info.html
• Most Frquently Challenged Books

 

 

I have great fear about the future. I hope the original Obama supporters can hold up their end of the bargain and vote him into office. If not, Canada, here we come. 

Tags:2008, banned books, christian right, fear, obama, sarah palin, vote Filed under Activista (green and political), lists, mass media, politics |