I think it was
through blogdex where I found this
this most challenged book index, posted at the American Librarians Association site.
Challenged is a weird concept for me. Looks like it means that somebody has gone to some library and asked the librarian to remove a particular book from the shelves. In a country where
Axe commercials (somebody blogged about them
here) seem to be the only thing that's challenged, the thought of asking a book to be removed from a library does not really fit with my idea of what a democracy is.
It's even weirder to look at the list itself.
Scary Stories tops it. It was probably challenged on the grounds that it might scare somebody.
Chocolate war is #3. Probably challenged because reading it might produce cavities. Harry Potter is 7th, which is even weirder, because it's probably impossible
not to find it outside libraries. But if you look ahead, even some books in the "Where's Waldo series" have also been challenged (maybe because Waldo's pullover looks like Freddie's in the Elm Street series).
Fahrenheit 451 describes a world where books have been forbidden not because the government wanted them to, but because any book might offend some person or other. Looks like he was right, after all. Fortunately, so far, challenging does not automatically mean banning.
