Just in time for ALA’s Banned Books Week later this month, Daily Kos just gave us a tip about the TIME magazine article on Presidential VP nominee Sarah Palin and how she tried to fire librarian Mary Ellen Baker for not banning questionable books.
Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
Over at Librarian.net, one of the commenters listed the books Palin tried to ban from the library including such literary gems as:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Anything by Stephen King
Everything by J.K. Rowling
Most of William Shakespeare’s work
and my personal favorite
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Maybe if she didn’t want to ban Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective her daughter Bristol wouldn’t be having a shotgun wedding.