We are seeing quite a bit of back and forth discussion on one of our Facebook posts regarding Banned Books Week. Apparently, some people are convinced if a book is challenged or banned, it contains obscene material. That is not always the case as books such as The Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye, Go Ask Alice and To Kill a Mockingbird rank among those that have been challenged or banned at one time or another. In the graphic novel area, both Killing Joke, for its implication of rape, and Watchment, for its depictions of violance, have both been challenged and banned. The thing about challenging a book to pull it from the shelves, is the Streisand Effect, which causes people to do the very thing you do not want them to do.
Thanks to the Streisand Effect, a Tennessee school board vote to pull Maus from the shelves increased the sales of the book exponentially. We sold more copies of Maus in 2022 than we had in the previous decade.
In general, the best thing to do with a book that you find objectionable is to not read it, and not let your children read it and maybe ask someone like a librarian to look it over. Making a public spectable of it only serves to call attention to it.
