The League

saving the children, one banned book at a time

by Erik Kain · August 5, 2009

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

Jaybird says:

August 5, 2009 at 8:13 am

If I was dismayed at the morals found in the Neo-colonialist Babar books, or the racism found in Little Black Sambo, or the stereotypes found in the Richard Scary books and I wanted to burn them in the parking lot of my Unitarian Church with full deniability…

I’d say that I was getting rid of the inks that were dangerous to the development of children.

And no one would suspect a thing.Report
richard says:

August 6, 2009 at 2:03 pm

this law is a screwed up mess, passed with the best of intentions. it’s not just books that are unintentionally targeted. it includes off road vehicles and bikes banned because of lead content in brake parts, (which kids put in their mouths all the time ) . the intent of the law was to prevent infants and toddlers from putting contaminated products into their mouths. now we are stuck with a law that has wreaked havoc such as this. i wrote to both of my senators and congresswoman concerning the misapplication of this law. no one cares. to me though the most depressing part of this mess is this was a fairly straight forward problem and congress screwed the solution and refuses to take corrective action . we are now faced with a 1000 page health bill no one understands. this does not give me the warm fuzzies.Report