Beautiful and Banned: A Note . . .
On Why We Need Even More "Read Banned Books" Stickers
I’m fond of this sticker, often affixed by clerks in American bookstores to purchases. This one, I believe, came from the Harvard Bookstore.
What I wish is for Harvard, along with many others, to sell—and to advise us all to read—the other banned books, the ones too many people prefer not to mention. The ones I no longer find in the library catalog of my former girls’ school library. Or in other bookstores, though sometimes one finds them on Amazon and sometimes on the net. For starters, these Dr. Seuss classics, to which I’ve devoted a number of posts:
And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street
I’ve linked each of these to their Wikipedia pages, where they are incorrectly described as using images of people that are “hurtful and wrong” or racist.
The original Little Black Sambo with Helen Bannerman’s illustrations has, unfortunately, also been banned; I’ve seen it described as beyond redemption, when in fact it’s a heartwarming tale of child empowerment.
An absolute favorite of mine is Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, (1929) a tale of a wooden doll made of mountain ash who starts her adventures in the state of Maine. But in 1999, says Wikipedia, “Susan Jeffers and Rosemary Wells updated, simplified, and rewrote Hitty's story, adding an episode about Hitty's experiences in the American Civil War.” In other words, they censored the parts they didn’t like, or as Wikipedia euphemistically puts it, “The adaptation removes some of the more archaic and problematic language found in Field's novel.”
Problematic? Captain Preble, father of the doll’s owner, Phoebe, ends up on an island in the South Seas, for example, where the indigenous peoples worship the doll as an idol. You mean that didn’t happen? It did. There are Native Americans and the white settlers of Maine call them “injuns” and don’t trust them. You mean that never happened? What do people fight over? Land. Oh, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this one. It’s a portrait of how people lived once upon a time. We all may no longer agree with the ways of long ago, but suppressing these as “problematic” is—to put it mildly—idiotic. Especially when the heart of the story is the strength, bravery and perseverance of Hitty, the heroine.
So I’d like to see more “Read Banned Books” stickers celebrating books that have been effectively erased—but we’d all be happier to have them welcomed back. And you, gentle readers—send me titles of your favorite banned children’s books.
I saw Little Black Sambo as a hero, a roll model. Back in the days of 45 records( yellow with a blue label with Nipper listening to his master's voice) that came with a book. The story was told and a bell would tell you to turn the page. I was probably 4 or 5. I guess Sambo became a derogative but was sorry to see the tale lost. Still one of the good guys for me.