"Little Red Riding Hood" Was Accused Of Promoting Alcohol To Children, And 11 Other Reasons That Books Have Been Banned

Alan Gratz responded to the news with, "They banned the book because it talks about the books that they have banned and because it talks about book banning," before adding, "It feels like they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re somewhat ashamed of what they’re doing and they don’t want a book on the shelves that calls them out."

It was banned in Michigan and New York after a reader complained about the image of a topless woman sunbathing in one of the drawings. In later editions of the book, the woman is still there but her bathing suit top is still in place.

Yep, this book series was removed from shelves in America after being viewed as inappropriate, with vulgar imagery and "offensive" language. Business Insider took these comments and dissected the books to see why parents were complaining and found: partial nudity (AKA wearing underpants), offensive language in the form of mentioning said underpants, playing pranks on others, and violence. Violence being the characters George and Harold defeating evil robots by hitting them with wooden planks, which even had the disclaimer: "WARNING: The following chapter contains graphic scenes showing two boys beating the tar out of a couple of robots. If you have high blood pressure, or if you faint at the sight of motor oil, we strongly urge you to take better care of yourself and stop being such a baby."

This popular Young Adult series focuses on the characters rebellion towards the tyrannical authority of their government. It's no surprise really that figures of authority across different governments labelled this series as a form of political rebellion. In Thailand, the three-finger salute used in the novels was adopted by protestors as a symbol of defiance against their government.

According to the American Library Association, The Handmaid's Tale is one of the most challenged books in US schools. A school district in Texas attempted to ban the book in 2006, and in an open letter to them Atwood commented, "the remark: ‘Offensive to Christians’ amazes me. Nowhere in the book is the regime identified as Christian. As for sexual explicitness, The Handmaid’s Tale is a lot less interested in sex than is much of the Bible." The book has even been banned by entire countries (Portgual and Spain) in the past. In 2022, Atwood teamed up with Penguin Random House to create an "unburnable" edition of the book as a powerful symbol against literary censorship. It sold at auction for $130,000.

Along with all seven of his noves, Ma Jian is banned from China due to his critique of the country's political regime. This book in particular follows a corrupt government official who is tasked with replacing people's dreams with government propaganda via the insertion of brain implants. Yikes.

The book had been banned across a dozen school districts in the US, with it being labelled as "pornographic" due to its depictions of oral sex and sexual assault. In New Jersey, George M. Johnson's family stopped a book ban from happening at a library board meeting by reading a letter that the author wrote for the audience: "As a Black queer person, I know what it’s like to read books that don’t tell my story. So, in this hunt to protect teens, does it ever cross your mind that removing or restricting this life-saving story for LGBTQ students only harms them more or how removing this life-saving story for Black teens harms them? Or do you not care? That’s really what this fight is over — removing LGBTQ stories and Black stories. If you don’t want your child to read it, that’s fine, you have every right to allow your child not to read, but you don’t get to trample on the rights of parents like my mother and my aunts."

The popular series has received various criticisms over the years due to some of its content. For the most part, this criticism stems from references to the occult, with the fear that children would be reciting dark magic and curses found in the books. St Edward Catholic School in Nashville banned the books from their shelves after the pastor worried they "conjured evil spirits", and that he consulted with several exorcists before making the decision.

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Often labelled as one of the greatest texts in American literature, it's also one of the most censored books in American history. A lot of the criticism is due to its sexual content and use of swear words. 

Although this is a classic childhood tale that many of us could probably recite off by heart, it was taken off the shelves of a Californian elementary school in 1990. The reason? Well, the particular adaptation that was on the reading list for five to six-year-olds, included a little bottle of red wine in Red Riding Hood's basket: "It gives the younger ones the wrong impression about alcohol. If they should refrain, why give them a story saying it’s OK?" Yeah... A bit of a reach, and I would argue that the story deals with some much darker themes such as a wolf eating her grandma.

A Florida school district pulled this particular dictionary as a state law requested the banishment of books containing descriptions of "sexual conduct". I know the dictionary may not feel like the most explicit text to exist, but due to it containing terms such as "oral sex" it was deemed inappropriate. Although it was eventually allowed to return to school shelves, Betti Cadmus, a spokeswoman for the Menifee Union School District in southwest Riverside County, commented: "the parents will be given the option to determine if they want their kids to have access to that dictionary", meaning that children would need a permission slip from their parents to be able to read it.

In a case of mistaken identity, the Texas board of education banned this book as they thought the author, Bill Martin Jr. was Ethical Marxism author, Bill Martin. Thus, they thought the children's author was critical of capitalism and pulled the book from the shelves. Of course, the two men are completely different people and somebody didn't get their fact-checking right. Oops.