Palin's Banned Books

You may have received this email... it is BOGUS. Please don't promulgate it!

• See this: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/palin-banned-books.htm

The truth

Palin did not ask for any actual books to be banned.

According to Anchorage Daily News, Wasilla Mayor Sarah Palin asked librarian Mary Ellen Baker if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. Baker's reply was that she would definitely not be all right with it. When questioned about this Palin called her inquiries rhetorical and simply part of a policy discussion with a department head "about understanding and following administration agendas." Baker resigned shortly before Palin began her second term.

If the book list looks familiar it is because many of these titles and works are listed in the American Library Association's list of frequently challenged books. Once a year, the American Library Association celebrates National Banned Book Week at public libraries all over the country in the spirit of celebrating the freedom to read.

"The American Library Association celebrates "Banned Book Week" in what it calls "the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met."

The Email you may see

For those of you who think that all of the opposition to Sarah Palin is from"leftwing" nuts; the following is a list of books that she tried to get banned when she was mayor of Wasilla. I am not sure that Mark Twain,William Shakespeare, Maya Angelou and Geofrey Chaucer would be considered dangerous to children. Judy Blume give me a break. Harry Potter, who is kidding who. I also fail to see how Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff should be banned.

This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.

When the librarian refused Palin tried to get her fired as she did with the Safety Director of the State who refused to fire a trooper who was getting a vicious divorce from her sister

She also told her Assembly of God Church in June 2008 that it is "God's Will" that the federal government contribute to the expansion of the Alaska pipeline.

This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. 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 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
• 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

-- Raymond Lutz - 2008-09-08