SAXTON B. LITTLE FREE LIBRARY
319 Route 87 Columbia, CT 06237
Phone: 860 228 0350 Fax: 860 228 1569 E-mail: staff@columbiactlibrary.org

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Speaking Volumes

Keeping you up-to-date on what's happening at your library. We invite you to join in the conversation!
OCTOBER 1, 2010
Hang on to your dishes folks...
                    
I have such fond memories of reading poetry as a kid. I LOVED Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, and Jeff Moss, and I still have my old battered copies of their books on my bookshelf at home.

           
 
Considering its Banned Book Week this week, I can’t help but mention the fact that Shel Silverstein’s poetry books have been banned and challenged in the past. I just did some searching around to find out why, and here is what I found:
 
A Light in the Attic was banned in some schools and libraries because it contains a poem that “encourages children to break dishes so they won't have to dry them.” Well, even though I am sure this is going to cause a wave of dish-breaking across the land, I will dare to post the poem in question here:
 
How Not To Have To Dry the Dishes
By Shel Silverstein

If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful, boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor—
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore.
 
In other schools, Where the Sidewalk Ends was pulled from shelves because different poems, "suggest drug use, the occult, suicide, death, violence, disrespect for truth, disrespect for legitimate authority, and rebellion against parents.” There have been complaints that the poem Dreadful fromSidewalk “promotes cannibalism,” because of the line ‘someone ate the baby.’ And, that the poem Sick, in which a child lists his ailments which promptly disappear when he realizes it’s Saturday, has been accused of “supporting hypochondria.”
 
Wow. Crazy stuff huh? I can’t believe I survived a childhood where I was actually allowed to read what I wanted (thanks Mom & Dad!).
 
Viva la Banned Books!


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