I love to read banned books ever since high school when I checked out Lady Chatterly’s Lover from the library. It wasn’t available in our school library of course, so I went to the Dale Carnegie library in another town. Our little town didn’t have a library at all. At that age I found it to be a more real kind of love story. Surprisingly enough the description of oral sex did not inspire me to give it a try. Just like the old bible story of Cain and Abel didn’t make me want to murder my brother. I was more impressed by the quality of the writing and the careful building of the characters. So, I read more works by D. H. Lawrence and learned more about the world outside the little bubble I was growing up in.

A quick look at the list of most often banned books makes me think far too many folks are going through life with a big stick up their ass. Must be hard to navigate that way. I cried when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird and again when watching the movie. The realistic depiction of racism and bigotry made me see the existence of those terrible traits in my community. That book was part of my growing disdain of the abuse of minorities by those who appeared to be upstanding citizens.

Some may be surprised at which books have most often been banned. Like Huckleberry Finn, The Diary of Ann Frank, Of Mice and Men, even Through the Looking Glass with Alice in Wonderland. The Bible has also been banned, which actually makes sense to those who have read the whole thing. I somewhat understand that some object to Nabokov’s Lolita and Huxley’s Brave New World because of explicit content that the very young might not need to know just yet. But please trust me, high school kids already know this stuff. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger was intriguing to me and as far as I can tell had no negative effect on my morality.

Last year I sent a copy of Maus to my grandsons specifically because this graphic novel by Art Spiegelman was banned in many school libraries and I am convinced that knowledge of the Holocaust is essential to a complete education. I hope my children and grandchildren always read banned books so that ignorance will not be part of their character.