When someone sent me this tw**t, I thought it had to be a joke.
It wasn’t. (Well, the tw**t may have been meant to be humorous, but the complaint was dead serious). As Canada’s National Post reports, someone who obviously hadn’t read the Dr. Seuss classic must have been “triggered” by its name:
Despite a demand to ban the Dr. Seuss book Hop on Pop because it “encourages children to use violence against their fathers,” the Toronto Public Library rejected the request after careful consideration.
“The children are actually told not to hop on pop,” reads a recently released report by the library’s Materials Review Committee.
As such, the committee rejected the complainant’s request to remove the book and “issue an apology to fathers in the GTA and pay for damages resulting from the book.”
The committee’s report, tabled Monday before the Toronto Public Library Board, revealed that they reviewed ban requests on a total of five books, one DVD and one audiobook over the course of 2013.
In all cases, the bans were rejected.
Good for Toronto! This was indeed a call for censorship, since public libraries are organs of the government. The other cases are nearly as bad:
In addition to Hop on Pop, one anonymous library user sought to ban Lizzy’s Lion, a 1984 rhyming picture book that features a girl’s pet lion eating a robber.
“The author wrote it to help children deal with bullies as it shows a little girl facing her fears and finding her own inner strength, depicted by the lion,” replied the committee.
The 2012 movie That’s My Boy, starring Adam Sandler, attracted a complaint that it features “sick and illegal behaviour and depicts it as humorous.”
The critically panned money-losing film opens with a teacher having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student, for which she is later jailed.
“The customer watched only 10 minutes of the movie so did not see that the teacher’s behaviour was recognized as illegal,” wrote the committee.
Another customer checked out an audiobook version of the 1983 romance novel A Kiss Remembered and then complained that it was “obscene and offends current societal morality.”
In that case, the library merely outlined the book’s popularity. “One of the library’s selection criteria is demand and this title has circulated over 1,600 times,” they wrote.
One conspiracy theorist even tried a hand at Toronto Library book censorship.
A January request to banKilling Kennedy by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was done on the basis that the book “Contains falsehoods because it concludes Kennedy was killed by Oswald alone.”
. . . A ban request on the bookComplete Hindi required a bit more legwork by the committee. A complainant wrote that the book should be removed from the collection because it inaccurately states that “Hindi and Urdu are paired languages.”
The “Hindi-Urdu controversy”— the ongoing dispute over the idea that the two Asian languages are the same — is so widespread it has its own Wikipedia page.
After consulting with “a professor of Hindi language and literature at a major Canadian university,” the review committee failed to take a side, but kept the book because “as in all languages, there are different opinions on correct usage.”
And, finally, there’s a bit of humor:
The council counted 46 books and periodicals that were “challenged” in 2011, including Hooray for Dairy Farming and The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, the 2007 memoir by pornographic actor Ron Jeremy.
Hooray for Dairy Farming? What’s so bad about that?
This idea that you have a right not to be offended is something unfamiliar to me—at least it’s something that seems to have increased dramatically since my youth. Yes, there were always calls for censorship, admirably rebuffed by librarians (the unsung heroes of America’s First Amendment), but it’s spilled over into nearly every area of society. While the prime example is the delicate feelings of Muslims, whose sentiments are so tender that their violation mandates the flogging of a teacher who names a teddy bear “Muhammad,” the “right to not be offended” has also entered the secular blogosphere, where many people seem to consider criticism as “harassment”. It isn’t.
Your closing paragraph mirrors my feelings exactly. What’s next? Think of all the classic “violent” children’s literature out there waiting to be banished! What a stupid world.
Not to mention any book containing any statement that somebody somewhere disagrees with.
The Tom and Jerry cartoon or Road Runner, or pretty much all classic cartoons, wouldn’t stand a chance.
I will be suing Tom & Jerry for damages. Yesterday a mouse laid an elaborate trap and dropped a piano on my cat…
Was it a valuable piano (obviously the cat, not being Thomas, escaped unscathed)?
It’s Grimm, indeed.
My wife works at a public library, and some of the reasons that people come up with to ban books are only one of the many sources of amusement provided by the public. In short, there are a lot of odd people out there!
Will Green Eggs and Ham be next? ( encouraging kids to eat moldy food)
Beat me by /\ much! [Those are supposed to be two fingers, held close together].
One time my daughter hopped on my stomach and it really knocked the wind out of me. You wouldn’t think a 2 year old could do that.
I hate to tell you this Shaun, but at three years my kid still takes “do not Hop on Pop” as a personal challenge. I have to actively tighten my stomach muscles, and even then this “game” only lasts a couple of hops.
Got a 12 year old who still does it. It is tough sometimes.
My daughter knocked me unconscious when she was about one. She threw her head back and hit me right in the forehead. The wife thinks I’m still unconscious but that is another story.
My daughter broke a rib once, doing the same thing at the same age. It was her mum’s rib, so my readings of Seuss were obviously working.
The vocabulary used in “Hooray for dairy farming” probably contains lactose.
Talks about teats…duh.
From Amazon: “Dairy Farming does not mention that there are many breeds of dairy cows, but discusses the history of pasteurization. It has too many broad general statements that lead to wrong conclusions. Two photos and a drawing show unsanitary conditions in the milking parlor. ”
No teats, sorry.
Maybe it was printed in a facility that processes peanuts. It’s either that or gluten, somehow.
Every year, during Banned Books Week, my library sets up a display of allegedly controversial books. A library patron left a note on the community bulletin board, saying she disagreed with the display and that those items weren’t meant to be put out for everyone to see. Hoo boy, did she ever miss the point!
If you tried hard enough, any and all books could fall into the banned category. Of course, that doesn’t include the bible! /snark
Each year the American Library Association prepares the “State of America’s Library Report,” which may be viewed below. Included is a list of the top ten most challenged books. There is a longer list of a hundred or so which has been developed over the years but I didn’t run across it straightway. The report for 2014 is based on 2013 data.
( )
Was that a link fail, or is the 2014 report one of the world’s shortest books?
Or was the link censored?
I guess I’ll have to hold my nose for the sake of free speech–as much as I’d like to see a lifetime ban on Adam Sandler acting in or writing anything.
From your mouth to dog’s ears.
There are a few movies out there that were marketed towards kids or at least marketed to families that made me cringe. The recent movie Moonrise Kingdom, which had good critical reviews, won awards, etc., was really too much IMO. It was wound around a story where two children pretty much have a sexual romance.
They may be children, but they’re pubescent and mature for their age they seem to both enjoy and benefit from the relationship.
What I find disturbing is that the adults try to punish them (at least the boy) as much as possible, with Social Services wanting to place the boy in a juvenile delinquent center and subject him to electroshock therapy. Surely that’s uglier and more shocking (ahem) than two children in a romantic relationship?
Anyway, just goes to show that people can disagree widely about what’s objectionable, so a complaint from the public about a book shouldn’t be taken as anything more than one person’s opinion… 😛
Terribly worrying development. It’s the triumph of cultural infantilism and group identity. Consider the “trigger warnings” now being advocated/adopted by schools, worrying that the tenderly sensible young will be traumatized by any reference/word/idea/scene that challenges even remotely their prior views and experiences. Ceiling cat help us!
This reminds me of a time when I was teaching seventh-grade English. A parent complained that a book her daughter read in my class (the girl chose the book herself) had a rape scene and was therefore unfit for a female who was their daughter’s age. I told the mother that the town where I was teaching had the highest incidence of rape per capita in the state. Although the statement was true, the mother was unmoved and demanded that I remove the book from my classroom. I refused to do that, but I did offer to warn students of the rough nature of the book’s plot. This the mother accepted, and I did warn students, just as I had offered. Sad to say, our school librarian pulled several Judy Blume books from the shelves following parent complaints.
Riiight – its clearly not the parent’s fault for being uninvolved in her kids’ reading choices, its your fault for giving the kid a choice!
Parental oversight can go too far in some cases, of course, but we’re talking about picking one novel from many options here, not censoring a biology textbook. I have little problem with the parent being involved in such choices. OTOH, if the parent can’t even be bothered to read a list of available books and talk with their kid about which one to pick, I really don’t have a lot of sympathy for the inevitable result of the kid honing in on the one choice most likely to tick the parent off.
“This idea that you have a right not to be offended is something unfamiliar to me—at least it’s something that seems to have increased dramatically since my youth.”
Coincides with the growth of the PC movement, I suspect.
The folks who want to ban “Hop On Pop” will freak out if they see “Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book” by Shel Silverstein…
“D is for Daddy. See Daddy. See Daddy sleeping on the couch. See Daddy’s hair. Daddy needs a haircut. Poor Daddy. Daddy has no money for a haircut. Daddy spends all his money to buy you toys and oatmeal. Poor Daddy. Daddy can not have a haircut. Poor poor Daddy. See the scissors….
Poor poor poor poor Daddy”
and…
“P is for Pony. See the pony. The pony lives in the gas tank of Daddy’s car. He makes the car go. That is called ‘horse power’. Maybe the pony is hungry–pour some nice sugar into the gas tank. Ponies love sugar. When Daddy comes home tell him you have fed the pony and maybe he will buy you a cowboy suit.”
On a more serious note, I agree that the idea that people have a right not to be offended is a bad one. It would seem to give veto power to the most thin-skinned.
I fear for The Gashlycrum Tinies.
I think it’s dumb to call for banning “Hop on Pop” (or any book for that matter), but there have been frequent attempts to ban works that show, imply, or can potentially be misinterpreted to show or imply violence against women, and those campaigns are frequently successful. It highlights a double standard in society where violence against women is taken far more seriously than violence against men.
It reminds me of a couple episodes from the show “What would you do?” The show uses actors to place unknowing members of the public in situations where they have to make moral choices, and secretly films them. It’s very interesting. Anyway, several episodes highlighted these kinds of disparities. In one episode, a man was shown not actually hurting a woman (implied to be his partner) but just physically threatening her, and people jumped all over him. In another, a woman was actually hurting a man, screaming and pulling his hair and beating him and generally being terrible. If I recall correctly, 192 people walked by and did nothing. (The results were similar for women vs. men openly stealing, women vs. men openly drugging a date’s drink in a bar, etc. Women usually got free passes for bad behavior.)
I’m not immune to this double standard, though. When women try to ban books for reasons of political correctness, I find it annoying. When men do it, I find it annoying and ridiculous and I can’t help but think of them as weak and lame…
I’ve always been annoyed by censoring or banning children’s books. The Noddy series disappeared for years because of perceived gay overtones (Big Ears always giving Noddy hugs), or racism (Gollywogs), both of which, even if true, go right over children’s heads. Then there was editing copies of Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ in high schools because of anti-Semitic themes, which seemed really silly to me – Just pick another of his books to read in class!
On the other hand, I am occasionally surprised by some children’s books. My wife bought home, ‘Love you forever’, which apparently is popular, but I had never heard of up to that point. Personally I found it a bit creepy, particularly the part where the mother drives across town, breaks into her grown-up son’s house, and cuddles him while he is asleep… Weird, but I’m certainly not suggesting banning the book.
The gollies have now been replaced by goblins…
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I think I’ve said it before, but I’m seriously (well, somewhat) offended by the idea that “you have a right not to be offended”.
And this is why my grade 9 and 10 English teacher made a *point* of assigning controversial texts. Steinbeck, Merchant of Venice, The Chrysalids, etc.
Seems like there’s a lot of killin’ and fornicatin’ and other obscene stuff in the bible that would rise to the level of banishment 🙂
Too many tits would have been my guess.
The Ron Jeremy book sounds like (pardon my Anglo-Saxon) a fucking good read. I’ve seen documentaries including the ugly little person-of-unusual-proportions, and he’s pretty funny. I suppose you’ve got to have a sense of humour to do the same effing ploughing day after day after day.
What’s that, Lassie? Censorship efforts lead to increased readership. Shock! Horror! That has never happened before!
Having mentioned a d*g, I’ll tuck my tail between my legs (has Ron Jeffrey “done” a Furry Cosplay film? Probably.) and slink away.
From Wikipedia :
Errr, like “Wow!” That’s not in the normal script for “Early Life of a Porn Star”
I’m not sure how 6 challenged items with none actually banned is “Political Correctness gone wild.” Not for nothing, the Chicago Public Library is hosting reading from the “top 10” challenged books of 2013. The population is similar, but there were enough books challenged to compile a “Top 10” list. Admittedly that may only be 11.
http://www.chipublib.org/news/be-subversive-read-a-banned-or-challenged-book-at-austin-irving-branch/