September 2005 – Page 3

Mind Pollution for Reading Rebels

Lindsay Beyerstein has started a Banned Books meme. Here are the books from the ALA’s Top 100 Challenged Books that I have used to dirty my delicate brain.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry

16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry

32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier

37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison

43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard

46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar

51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell

59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox

67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday

73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King

78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy

96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Being a pre-service teacher and voracious reader with an interest in Young Adult Fiction makes this list an odd one. I count 68, but I’m tired.

Chuck’s list is complete with interesting commentary on challenged books.

Whoopsie Daisy

A Texas grand jury on Wednesday indicted Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates on charges of conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post. A defiant DeLay insisted he was innocent and called the prosecutor a “partisan fanatic.”

DeLay responds to the accusations and steps down as floor leader. Alas.

More: A chronology of key events and controversies in DeLay’s career.

And even more: Can you say schadenfreude? I certainly can.

Banning Books Only Makes Them More Lovable

Happy Banned Book Week!

When I was reminded at Roxanne’s last night (during yet another bout of insomnia) I took a look at the list of most challenged books of 2004 and laughed aloud.

Dav Pilkey is a household staple around here, especially for the Captain Underpants series. If it gets the little one reading I have absolutely zero complaints, especially since it also inspires him to write and draw. Maya Angelou’s book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is taught as regular high school curriculum right around the block. For many of the young women I know who attended that school, that book choice was one of the only ones that stuck with them over the years. You just don’t ban brilliance like Maya Angelou. And for what it’s worth, I eked through high school by doing a bad report on “Of Mice and Men” in lieu of attending class.

Even in my education classes, one suggestion for teaching reluctant readers is to teach the controversy, so to speak. Let them know the books are “banned,” read them anyway, and discuss the literary themes and the social themes surrounding their challenged status. Reports by those who have tried this method have been nothing but complimentary.

Banned books be damned. And thus, wholly lovable.

UPDATE: Heretik writes an ode to Toni Morrison, one of my all-time favorite authors.

Our Best Wishes

I hope Christine has infinitely more in store for us.

Looney Bin Round-Up

The craziest of the crazies. At least, the ones who are published today.

Sound the Alarm! screames Rebecca Hagelin. It’s time to intern the A-rabs!

Dennis Prager sez, “The Left is hysterical.” Example A: They said that Bush mislead the American public about reasons for the war in Iraq. Which, clearly, is crazy, given that the president told us from the get-go that we were going in because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and we all now see that… oh wait.

Barack Obama is insane for wanting poor people to not be poor.

Mike Adams says, “If you get a gun, it’ll make you feel like more of a man. It worked for me, at least.” And yes, he actually does end his column with the phrase, “Welcome to my world.”

Contrary to history and all evidence, the Republican party has never been racist. (Southern strategy, anyone?)

I’m sure there’s more out there, but it’s time for class.

D.C. Protest Pics

Courtesy of my sister, who lives in D.C.

protest1
This man, who was there to protest the protest, spent a good deal of his time yelling at my sister, “Hey, baby-killer! How many babies did you kill today?”

Ah, how closely she has followed in my footsteps. We do, after all, have a proud family tradition of being called baby-killers.

protest2
Hot boys in skirts and pink wigs. Ain’t nothin’ better.

protest3
This requires no caption.

Amazing, Amazing, Amazing.

If you do nothing else tonight, read this post, from the blog with the greatest name ever.

why on earth should pro-choicers accept the premise that the fetus is the moral equivalent of a “child,” when most of the people who purportedly believe it aren’t willing to apply this principle with the slightest consistency?

(…)

But wait—it gets worse. We now get to the second clause, which exempts women who initiate the decision to get an abortion entirely from criminal penalties! So, in other words, women who procure abortions are committing first-degree murder—but should not be punished. (Enshrining this principle into criminal law would certainly have interesting consequences; if you want somebody killed, just pay somebody to do it, and as far as you’re concerned it’s all nice and legal.) There are two possible explanations for this bizarre combination of policies. The first—which is the reason that abortion laws passed in the 19th century (including the Texas law struck down in Roe) applied only to doctors—is that Republicans do not consider women to be responsible rights-bearing subjects (unlike, say, the first-trimester fetus that inhabits a woman’s body.) Given the extent to which the “pro-life” position tends to come packaged with a variety of other patriarchal regulations of female sexuality, this would seem to be a significant part of the puzzle. You may remember this kind of phony male chauvinist “compassion” from some of the conservative op-eds that came out in the wake of Karla Faye Tucker and Titanic—it used to be women and children first, but then those feminists ruined everything and now a woman can be executed as if the laws should apply to them because they’re legal persons or something. (I mean, sure, women couldn’t own property or vote or practice law or anything, but I bet they’d trade that for having doors held open for them regularly anytime!) Shorter American pro-life movement: fetuses are right-bearing subjects, adult women are not. But there is a second explanation: pro-lifers sincerely believe that women who get abortions are guilty of first-degree murder, but they are willing to abandon this purely for reasons of political expedience. If this is the case, this provides yet another glaring hint that new bans on abortion would be as internally contradictory and inequitably enforced as the old ones, and that the rhetoric of most “pro-lifers” about fetuses being “children” is not to be taken seriously.

Dr. Phil’s Son to Marry Ho-bag

Well, that’s what the “pro-marriage” Christian right will tell you. To anyone interested in being thoroughly disgusted, I introduce to you Fredrick the Epistolizer, who I like to think of as Dr. Laura’s long-lost twin (yes, he too over-uses the term “shacking up”).

Interesting an episode the other day was about the evils of judging by appearance.
As with those that claim they read Playboy for the articles, I suppose he became smitten by this tramp through her personality.

Because she posed for Playboy, she must be a tramp with no personality. And these ladies must be oozing charm…

For those charmed by the puny, ditzy model type, be warned. They don’t strike me as the kind that will do much housework or happily do as they are told like a proper wife should.

Right. No need to respond to this…

Any satisfaction to be derived from having such a showcase bride based upon contemporary standards of beauty idolizing malnutrition and an emaciated look will no doubt be eaten up by divorce settlement costs a few years down the road.

Yeah, I’m not a big fan of malnutrition either. But I feel like eating disorder awareness is not his primary concern here.

Glamour wenches seldom make good companions and hardly the best selection as mothers.

Everyone knows: Ugly women raise better kids. (Now, if I were the kind of good Christian woman who would marry a character like Fredrick, I’d probably be a little insulted by this. Luckily, I am not).

As I once read in a Christian book on youth ministry, when it comes to basing a relationship primarily on appearance, fine feathers clothe an expensive bird.

…why do I get the feeling that that “bird” is always an attractive woman?

Dolphins Gone Wild

I know this is dangerous but I can’t take it seriously.

Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Take a moment with me to imagine the conversations people are having about the dolphins:
“Have we secured the dolphins?”
“We’re working on it, sir.”
“What has happened so far?”
“What happened? Gunfights, explosions, sharks, the usual.”

Scalia’s Abortion Bender

NORFOLK, VA—Saying “Fuck this shit, I’m stopping beating hearts with my bare hands,” Justice Antonin Scalia, overlooked for the vacated position of Supreme Court chief justice, went on a spiteful abortion-performing bender over the weekend. “If I’m not going to be permitted a lasting judicial legacy, to hell with law and order,” said Scalia, the conservative Reagan appointee who has served on the court since 1986. “I worked my ass off for 20 years, and no one cares. So, who gives a shit? Safe, legal abortions for all. Who wants one?” Scalia added that 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore “totally won that election, any idiot knows that.”