‘Magic Tree House’ Author, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ among hundreds of Tennessee book bans - PEN America
pen.org
The removals in Tennessee are the result of a growing political movement to control information through book banning.

Magic Tree House author Mary Pope Osborne, children’s poet Shel Silverstein and Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson have joined Judy Blume, Sarah J. Maas, Eric Carle and Kurt Vonnegut on a mind-boggling list of hundreds of books purged from some Tennessee school libraries.

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    411·
    2 days ago

    These people are going after anything that might imply nudity at all. I seem to remember Calvin had an immense hatred of baths. So once his mom finally got him in, poof, that now has to go, because he’s naked under all that water.

    I’m surprised they don’t just ban all visual art that depicts humans, since everyone is naked under their clothes.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      162·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think that’s it. It’s named after philosophers, the people banning aren’t always stupid. I bet Calvin seems like a left wing propagandist to them too.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        2 days ago

        You’re not wrong, in general. But in this specific case, in Tennessee, it’s specifically about the nudity.

        Any materials that “in whole or in part” contain any “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse” are inappropriate for all students and do not belong in a school library.

        It’s “nudity” of any type, which puts the Venus de Milo in the same category as Brazzers.

        • ouRKaoS@lemmy.todayEnglish
          3·
          11 hours ago

          So the Bible is inappropriate for all students and there’s several parents I need to report…

          • Hazor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            16 hours ago

            They were raised to be terrified of it, and so they raise their kids to be terrified of it, and the cycle perpetuates. It’s hard to break. The reasoning is usually that seeing nudity will tempt them to sin. As someone who abandoned his puritanical upbringing nearly 20 years ago, I still have a hard time just being ok with human bodies - even after being a nurse for some years, I’m still not entirely desensitized to nudity.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lolEnglish
          61·
          2 days ago

          I was about to jump in and defend the heck out of Shel Silverstein but it’s based on a broad sweeping nudity ban?

          That’s fair. That man was an accidental children’s book author and the best kind of weirdo.
          The ban is dumb but his inclusion less so.

          • lemonaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            I said before but my guess is that with Shel they saw the title “A Boy Named Sue” and automatically banned him.

    • Zahille7@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Geez… God forbid there’s a copious amount of bubbles or something covering anything if Calvin ever does jump back out of the bath