Palin Against Books: ysabetwordsmith

Palin Against Books

This message popped up on the Cybermind list today. I despise censors. Take careful note of the kind of books Palin wants to take away from people.

Here is a list of books that Sarah Palin tried to have banned from the Wasilla Public Library, according to the official minutes of the Library Board. When she was unsuccessful at having these books banned, she tried to have the librarian fired.

As many of you will notice, it is a hit parade for book burners.

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

arielstarshadow

September 7 2008, 01:36:09 UTC 12 years ago

New comment

The Dictionary?!?!?!?!

I knew she'd tried to get books banned, but I hadn't see the list until now. Good grief.

glitteringlynx

September 7 2008, 01:43:39 UTC 12 years ago

Also "The Living Bible."

THIS MAKES NO SENSE!!!

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

12 years ago

cimeara

September 7 2008, 01:45:04 UTC 12 years ago

I saw this on another person's LJ, but someone commented that it's not her particular list, it's just a list of books that people -have- tried to have banned. But I didn't research further on my own, so I'll leave it at that.

That she talked about banning books at all is bad enough in my, um, book.

And the letter by a one of her townspeople, that details much of what I see as a problem with her candidacy, -has- been vetted. Snopes approves it as true.

ideealisme

September 7 2008, 01:52:02 UTC 12 years ago

"but someone commented that it's not her particular list"

I can well believe that. If Sarah Palin has read the Decameron, I'm a Dutchman.

(Come to think of it, I've never read it either, but that's not the point)

jenett

September 7 2008, 01:51:44 UTC 12 years ago

The list quoted is from the ALA's list of books frequently challenged or subjected to bans - as has been noted in some of the librarian blog discussions I've seen, several of the titles on that list weren't out at the time of the theoretical discussion.

The American Library Association sponsors a Banned Books week every September (the last week) - you can find more info here

I always do a series of posts about it during the week: they're public (unlike most of my journal) and designed for easy linking.

dulcinbradbury

This list is UNTRUE and has been circulating all over the place. It is a list of commonly banned books -- some of which weren't even written when she had her little book banning scandal.

From what I can tell, she didn't have a particular list that she tried to get banned. She opened the conversation as a hypothetical "how would I get this done?"

September 7 2008, 05:37:54 UTC 12 years ago

You'll note that she didn't say "these are the books" she said "these are the kind of books" - meaning that she wasn't claiming it was her list.

je_reviens

There doesn't appear to be any documentation for the list

dakiwiboid

September 7 2008, 02:04:21 UTC 12 years ago

Jessamyn at librarian.net says there seems to be no documentation for attaching this specific list to Palin's name.

Here is absolutely all that the Time article in which the book-banning article story originated said about Palin's interaction with the library:

"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
Source.

I don't like Palin either. I think that she's a dangerous woman and I think that it's vital for her and her running mate to be defeated, but I don't believe that it's appropriate for us to pass on exaggerated and untrue statements about her or anyone else just because they happen to be congruent with the way we see the world.

Re: There doesn't appear to be any documentation for the list

September 7 2008, 05:38:22 UTC 12 years ago

You'll note that she didn't say "these are the books" she said "these are the kind of books" - meaning that she wasn't claiming it was her list. So while others may be trying to pass this off as "her" list, that isn't the case here.

beckyzoole

September 7 2008, 04:04:37 UTC 12 years ago

Rindi White of the Anchorage Daily News says that Palin asked the Wasilla librarian if she could ban or censor books, and the librarian refused. A few days later, Palin asked for the librarian's resignation, which was, again, refused.

However, there is no evidence that Palin submitted a list of books, and such a list is not to be found in the official minutes of the Library Board. The quoted list is taken, verbatim, from the ALA website's list of frequently-banned books.

The ultra-right is gleeful about this meme, playing it up as an instance of naughty liberals stupidly attacking their girl.

the_vulture

September 7 2008, 07:12:04 UTC 12 years ago

That's pretty much what my own digging around came up with, too.

'Course, all that digging came up with other stuff that kinda worries more than a little, like just how ultra Christian right she is.

padparadscha

September 7 2008, 05:31:40 UTC 12 years ago

I like scrolling through and trying to guess what people find offensive in each of the ones I've read.

I could resort to a really low blow about how the teenage body book would have come in QUITE HANDY for her, but I am much too classy to use cheap shots like that. *adjusts halo*

September 7 2008, 05:35:36 UTC 12 years ago

Ah, should've read the comments here first. I won't attribute the list to her till I get it confirmed, but the fact that she wants to ban any book is still enough for me. (I disagree with or dislike a lot of the books people want banned, but that doesn't mean no one should be allowed access to them!)

Shows what I know. *tosses out halo*

Deleted comment

The Book List is a Fake

neodaoist

September 7 2008, 16:58:09 UTC 12 years ago

Greetings and Felicitations,

The list was posted as a comment to something on librarian.net. It was quickly picked up by people as the list of books Palin was proposing for banning. The list has absolutely nothing to do with Palin.
The person who owns librarian.net made this statement.
note: there’s some buzz being generated that says that this post contains a comment that lists the books that Palin supposedly wanted banned. The list is here, but there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up.
http://www.librarian.net/

I know about this because I have been arguing about it for days on http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

padhopper

September 7 2008, 13:51:40 UTC 12 years ago

You have got to be kidding me?!?!? In this day and age there are still people doing that sorta shit.

thetathx1138

September 7 2008, 16:17:35 UTC 12 years ago

Do you have a link? I'd like to see if they've got documentation citing specific reasons, because this is an insanely random list.

September 7 2008, 16:25:38 UTC 12 years ago

The ALA Banned Books week people put out a guide with reasoning - we've got the 2004 edition at work, and will have the most recent one coming in the mail sometime really shortly.

If there's any books you're particularly interested in, I'm glad to look them up. (The guide gives specifics of when and where they were challenged, and a summary of the reasons given. However, this is only reported challenges, and research strongly suggests that only a fraction of attempted challenges get reported to the ALA. Consider it a snapshot guide, not a comprehensive list.)