Censored Books Critical Viewpoints

by Burress, Lee; Karolides, Nicholas J.; Kean, John M.; Paterson, Katherine; Miller, Arthur; Williams, John A.; Mazer, Norma Fox; Anaya, Rudolfo A.; Stolz, Mary; Hopkins, Lee Bennett; Mitchell, Arlene Harris; Sleator, William; Brancato, Robin F.; Jenkinson,

• ISBN13: 9780810840386
• ISBN10: 0810840383
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-23
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Summary

This collection of sixty-three essays provides assistance to the growing number of students, teachers, librarians, and parents who find themselves confronting a censorship situation. The contributors are both authors--of fiction, drama, and poetry for adults, children, and adolescents--and teachers of literature, writing about the books that are most frequently challenged in schools and libraries. Part I provides six authors' perspectives on censorship by omission and commission. Part II provides responses and defenses of individual books. Arranged alphabetically by the title of the text, and others to teaching concerns. The array is enlightening.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue: How to Be Obscene
Perspectives: Censorship by Omission and Commission	p. 1
On Censorship	p. 3
Blackballing	p. 11
Not Laughable, But Lethal	p. 19
Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry	p. 25
White-outs and Black-outs on the Book Shelves	p. 32
"Shut Not Your Doors": An Author Looks at Censorship	p. 41
Challenging Books	p. 49
A Rationale for Teaching Huckleberry Finn	p. 51
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Review of Historical Challenges	p. 61
Annie Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl	p. 72
Anne on My Mind by Nancy Garden	p. 80
In Defense of: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Deenie, and Blubber - Three Novels by Judy Blume	p. 87
The Bible: Source of Great Literature and Controversy	p. 98
The Bible and the Constitution	p. 103
Black Boy (American Hunger): Freedom to Remember	p. 109
Black Like Me: In Defense of a Racial Reality	p. 117
Bless the Beasts and Children by Clendon Swarthout	p. 125
The Relevance of Brave New World	p. 130
Huxley's Brave New World as Social Irritant: Ban It or Buy It?	p. 136
"Alas, alas, That ever love was sin!" Marriages Moral and Immoral in Chaucer	p. 144
If You Want to Know the Truth...:The Catcher in the Rye	p. 159
Fighting Words in and over Catch-22	p. 167
"They tell you to do your own thing, but they don't mean it.": Censorship and The Chocolate War	p. 179
Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange	p. 185
She's Just Too Womanish for Them: Alice Walker and The Color Purple	p. 191
Fueling the Fire of Hell: A Reply to Censors of The Crucible	p. 201
Death of a Salesman: An American Classic	p. 209
The Debate in Literary Consciousness: Dickey's Deliverance	p. 220
"Messing up the minds of the citizenry en route": Essential Questions of Value in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test	p. 226
A Farewell to Arms	p. 237
A Defense of A Farewell to Arms	p. 243
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes	p. 249
"If we cannot trust..." The Pertinence of Judy Blume's Forever	p. 256
"Whatsoever things are pure..." A Case for Go Ask Alice	p. 261
An Apologia for Pearl Buck's The Good Earth	p. 268
The Grapes of Wrath: Preserving Its Place in the Curriculum	p. 278
A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich: A Rationale for Classroom Use	p. 288
If Beale Street Could Talk: A Rationale for Classroom Use	p. 294
Maya Angelou Is Three Writers: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	p. 299
Learning to Live: When the Bird Breaks from the Cage	p. 306
The Stop of Truth: In the Night Kitchen	p. 317
It's OK If You Don't Love Me: Evaluating Anticipated Experiences of Readers	p. 322
Johnny Got His Gun: A Depression Era Classic	p. 331
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George	p. 338
Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree: Autobiography and Education	p. 343
Teaching Rationale for William Golding's Lord of the Flies	p. 351
Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"	p. 358
Manchild in a World Where You Just Might Make It: Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land	p. 363
Reflections on "The Shylock Problem"	p. 370
Supporting Traditional Values: My Darling, My Hamburger	p. 379
Why Nineteen Eighty-Four Should Be Read and Taught	p. 382
A Teachable Good Book: Of Mice and Men	p. 388
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	p. 395
Moby Dick vs. Big Nurse: A Feminist Defense of a Misogynist Text: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	p. 398
Threshold Literature: A Discussion of Ordinary People	p. 414
In Defense of Our Bodies, Ourselves	p. 424
A Look Inside a Landmark: The Outsiders	p. 431
Is Run, Shelley, Run Worth Fighting For?	p. 442
Penance and Repentance in The Scarlet Letter	p. 449
A Rationale for Reading John Knowles' A Separate Peace	p. 456
Authenticity and Relevance: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five	p. 464
Censoring Judy Blume and Then Again, Maybe I Won't	p. 471
In Defense of To Kill a Mockingbird	p. 476
Finding Humor and Value in Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic	p. 485
About the Contributors	p. 490
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