The Wizard of Oz This may seem an innocent journey, but throughout the twentieth century and across various US states, the book was banned for its strong female characters, use of magic, promotion of socialist values and attribution of human characteristics to animals.
From executives behind the film demanding their sick and injured actors return to set despite still needing to heal, to the director of the film slapping a 16-year-old and encouraging her to take pills to regulate her appetite and stay slim, the set and filming process of the Wizard of Oz was toxic.
What Is the Most Banned Book in America? For all time, the most frequently banned book is 1984 by George Orwell. (How very Orwellian!) The most banned and challenged book for 2020 was George by Alex Gino.
Even as recently as this summer, Winnie-the-Pooh was stirring up trouble and was banned in China because bloggers started using images of Winnie-the-Pooh to mock President Xi Jinping. Due to China's censorship policies, children are being denied a literary classic.
Due to themes of death and the fact that the main characters are talking animals, a parent group in Kansas sought to ban the book from their students' school libraries.
Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. Beginning in 1965, it was forbidden to read Green Eggs and Ham in Maoist China because of its “portrayal of early Marxism,” and the ban was not lifted until author Theodor Seuss Geisl's death in 1991.
The famous children's book “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown is technically a “banned book” for two reasons. When the book came out in 1947, a New York Public Library children's librarian hated the book and thought it was too sentimental.
The novel promoted mysticism had the word ass in it. There were references to tobacco and alcohol. The novel promoted disobedience and promoted drugs and communism.
There were concerns over the violence and increasingly dark tone of the later books but most of the censorship attempts were for religious reasons. It was also banned in some Christian schools in the UK.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has been banned countless times. This Depression-era tragic tale that was praised for its realism is regularly found in the top one hundred of the banned book list published by the American Library Association because of racial slurs, profanity, vulgarity, and offensive language.
Nearly every challenge purports that the book is racist, many citing the book's repetition of the word “nigger.” Others simply state that Huck Finn “conflicted with the values of the community.”
Because everybody knows that this is the moral of The Wizard of Oz. “There's no place like home” neatly sums up the moral of the story, even people who say that “home” refers to people.
W. C. Fields was originally chosen for the title role of the Wizard (after Ed Wynn turned it down, considering the part "too small"), but the studio couldn't meet Fields' fee. Wallace Beery lobbied for the role, but the studio refused to spare him during the long shooting schedule.
The authorities further believe that the books promote negative foreign behavior, especially on issues such as transgender, gay, lesbianism, bisexuality, intersex, and asexuality. Book stores in Tanzania have been ordered to take the books off their shelves and display racks.
He later achieved international recognition with his "Captain Underpants" series, which was adapted as a film. The "Captain Underpants" books are among the American Library Association's list of the top 100 most banned and challenged books from the past decade, due to complaints from parents about violent imagery.
In 2010, the book was briefly banned from Texas' third grade curriculum due to a confusion between author of children's books Bill Martin Jr, and author of Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation (Creative Marxism) philosopher Bill Martin.
The reasons A Wrinkle in Time has been banned are generally focused primarily on its religious elements. Many objected to a scene where Jesus, Ghandi, Einstein, and Buddha are described as leaders who have been fighting the Black Thing. Many Christians felt the scene equated Jesus to the others.
Controversial because of profanity and theme of rebellion, the book was first banned in 1986 in many libraries and schools. A 30th Anniversary Edition of the book appeared in 2004, and two audio editions (1983 and 2000) are also available.
You probably wouldn't think that a book by well-known children's author Shel Silverstein would make a banned books list, but a Colorado library found the book to be "sexist." The Giving Tree was banned in 1988 by the library, quoting a selfish relationship between the boy and the tree as the reasoning.
Why didn t Anne Carroll Moore like Goodnight Moon?
Although she was officially retired at the time, influential children's librarian and head of The New York Public Library's children's services, Anne Carroll Moore, famously disliked Goodnight Moon (dismissing it as overly sentimental).
The famous memoir Night has recently been removed from some schools' curriculums and libraries in the United States. The administrators and staff believe the memoir to be too explicit about the Holocaust for the students.
What children's classic did the New York Public Library originally refuse to stock?
Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, would have made the Top 10 list and might have topped it, the library notes, but for the fact that “influential New York Public Library children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the Library didn't carry it …
