[Cúdae]

Books are banned for the said reasons above. Books are burned, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth, etc. because someone took something too seriously.

Let your eyes widen at this one: To date, my school has banned 452 books and authors (hey look how close that is to 451, even more ironic.) from school grounds. As in, "Don't you dare touch that book young man/lady!" One of these banned items was the series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder that started with "Little House in the Big Woods."

Just to prove my point, I have dug up the staement on why Wilder was banned, why Tolkien was banned, and why Jean Lively was banned. Here we go:
Wilder: "...because of the writings on sadness and excessive joy in girlhood that could poison the minds of the 14 to 18 year-old-girls in this school."
Tolkien: "...because of the <u>utter</u> rejection of respect for the Divine presented in the forms of Melkor and Sauron. ...because of the strong presence of magick and other forms of anti-religious practices. ...because of the creation of believable Hobbits and Elves that could lead a young mind to believe in these creatures."
Lively: "...because of the short story "The Flight of Snowbird" which deals with the thought of murdering an autistic child who was the sister of the thinker." (FYI, this short story ended admirably with the boy saving his sister instead of letting her drown.)

And for fun on the real reason for the banning of Romeo and Juliet: "...because this drama promotes the suicide of young people."

I won't bore you with other statements (although some are downright amusing). These statements already presented can be found to be either perfectly acceptable, ridiculously unacceptable, or a combination of both. My take is that they are unacceptable--especially the one about Wilder.