“A book is a loaded gun,” Ray Bradbury famously wrote in Fahrenheit 451, and plenty of people seem to concur with the story’s book-burning Captain Beatty that certain works are just too dangerous to leave sitting around. Parents and library patrons regularly band together to demand that certain books be pulled from public shelves, citing a desire to protect readers from coarse language, sexual themes, or other perceived offenses. In honor of Banned Books Week (September 25 to October 1), take a gander at the infographic below from Readers.com, which features some of the most protested books ever published, according to the American Library Association.
Though the ideas presented in books like the Harry Potter series might not be quite as dangerous as some protesters would have you believe, a few kids’ books have actually had to be recalled for safety reasons—like the 1990s crib books, which mistakenly included straight pins left over from the manufacturing process.
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September 26, 2016 – 11:30am