Book banning is the current culture war.  Some people are nervous about what students read.  In a town I recently lived in, “Ghost Boys” by Jewell Parker Rhodes was pulled from the school reading list.  A twelve year old black boy killed by a white police officer tells his story.  Complaining parents asserted the book promotes cop bashing.  I read it.  It does not.

Will “The Diary of Anne Frank” be next?  Like in “Ghost Boys,” an adolescent tells a story about being considered “less than” because of who she is.  The latest furor is over “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel about the Holocaust.  Some mice, captives in the camp, are naked.  We’re talking animal, not human, nudity.  I’ll have to read that book, if I can get it, because it’s flying out of libraries and stores.

Ironically, banning books makes books irresistible.  Students have formed banned-book reading clubs nationwide.  Before we celebrate increased reading, let’s be clear: book banning is dangerous.  Do we really want to pull books that make us feel uncomfortable?  That prod us to think about someone else’s perspective?  That make us question?

We live in America, not in a repressive autocracy.  Book banning has no place in a democracy.