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Banned Books Awareness: “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”

October 9, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 4

Censorship has a variety of points along its dark spectrum- from the outright removal of books to mere challenges; both fiction and non-fiction works are frequent targets of the flames of ignorance for various reasons. Sometimes a book comes along that, by virtue of being so controversial, causes lines to […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Dr. Seuss

September 11, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 8

We all grew up with the lovable and lyrical children’s books by Theodor Seuss Geisel, otherwise known as the immortal Dr. Seuss. His imaginative characters and trisyllabic meter rhymes gave us classics like Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Thomas Jefferson

September 5, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 1

He was the third President of the United States, the most intellectual figure in shaping America’s early history, and a voice of reason in his own time as well as today. Jefferson was an avid reader, stating, “I can not live without books.” He felt that the reading of books […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Thomas Paine

August 28, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 2

Thomas Paine was many things: author, radical, inventor, intellectual, and revolutionary; he is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Paine was also no stranger to censorship, though- in his own time or the present day. He has been described as “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Sherlock Holmes

August 21, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 1

On Thursday, August 11, 2011, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once again made headlines, but it wasn’t for literary accomplishment or news of a long-lost Sherlock Holmes crime buster. He, instead, found himself on newswires around the world for having one of his books banned. That night a school board in […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Shel Silverstein

August 15, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 25

For more than 40 years the books of Sheldon Allan “Shel” Silverstein have entertained and delighted readers as they are shared by fans and passed down to younger generations. The Giving Tree is one of the most affectionate, oft-quoted, and beloved children’s stories of all time; A Light in the […]

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Banned Books Awareness: Slaughterhouse-Five

August 7, 2011 R. Wolf Baldassarro 10

What Mark Twain was to the 19th century, Kurt Vonnegut was to the 20th. Both are among the finest examples of the American Satirists. He was, and is, a beloved fixture of American literature. When Vonnegut died in 2007, members of the Alplaus Volunteer Fire Department in New York lowered […]