Protect the Books

All librarians have surely heard of the school that banned a dictionary for containing inappropriate words.

talulahmankiller at Life Under a Rock has also heard of this, and offers an interesting perspective. As she says, "I could rant and rail about how ridiculous this is, but really–we all know how ridiculous this is."

This is pretty much why I haven't said anything. (That, and being too desperately busy with other hugely important things like eating, reading other peoples' blog posts, playing Dragon Age, etc.)

Anyway, that's not the interesting perspective--what I like is that she takes the opportunity to imagine how it happened that it occurred to someone to ban the dictionary, and concludes that some child probably pointed out to a grown-up that they'd found a 'naughty' definition, thus spoiling things for all the other children who might have enjoyed reading it.

Someone told!

There follows an entertaining tale of the author's own childhood experience with telling on a book.

I don't have any similar incident in my history, so this inspired me to reflect on how else it might have happened, which could be that some kids were talking in hushed excitement about the naughty words, and a grown-up overheard. That's what happened when I was a kid.

The naughty books we'd so enjoyed reading, puzzling over, and discussing mysteriously disappeared once my mother realized we'd been reading them.

The lesson: make sure you're not being overheard by the grown-ups before you start talking about that finer points of that weird thing those people were doing in that story.

Or by the other kids who'll tattle on you, of course. Trust no one!

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