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Banned Books Awareness: “The Family Book”

June 4, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 0

Todd Parr has written over 30 children’s books, and he is the winner of two National Parenting Publication Awards, as well as three Oppenheim Gold Awards; but his The Family Book (preschool-grade 2; 2004) has stirred up some controversy. In a whimsical, engaging way, the daily lives of all kinds of […]

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Banned Books Awareness: “Looking for Alaska”

May 14, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 0

The Tennessee legislature recently passed a bill stating that teachers cannot encourage “gateway sexual activity,” as part of the state’s abstinence-based sexual education movement. Seizing the opportunity implied by the new law, officials in Sumner County last week banned John Green’s Young Adult novel “Looking for Alaska” from the school […]

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Banned Books Awareness: “Yertle the Turtle”

April 30, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 7

For the third time in recent weeks the Banned Books Awareness series once again focuses on some rather disturbing trends from Canada. Incidents of censorship by the border patrol, negative reactions to fiction based on historical documents, and now it seems Dr. Seuss has been branded too political for the […]

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Banned Books Awareness: “The Dirty Cowboy”

April 23, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 0

Last Thursday (4/19/2012), the Annville-Cleona School Board in Pennsylvania voted 8-0 to remove an award-winning children’s book, The Dirty Cowboy, by Amy Timberlake, from its elementary schools after a student’s parents objected to its illustrations. Board Vice President Gordon Waldhausen was absent, but President Tom Tshudy said, “We take review […]

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Banned Books Awareness: “The Book of Negroes”

April 16, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 2

Lawrence Hill wrote one of the bestselling and most-popular Canadian novels of all time; but what does he do for an encore? Hill, who will be in Edmonton this coming Tuesday (4/17/12) to deliver the University of Alberta’s annual Henry Kreisel lecture, knows how to follow up a smash hit. […]

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Banned Books Awareness: “Death at Seaworld”

April 2, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 0

David Kirby is the New York Times bestselling author of Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic and Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment. A professional journalist for over 15 years, controversy swells over his investigative reporting with his latest exposé. Death […]

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Banned Books Awareness: The Daily Newspaper

March 26, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 1

Satire and editorial cartoons have been a part of political commentary since colonial days; Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” (1754), on the need for unity in the American colonies, is an early example. It has become such an integral part of social dialogue that the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning […]