Banned Books Week: A Light in the Attic

Meet one of the banned/challenged books that makes me go - why? (Don't get me started on what I think of people who object to Winnie-the-Pooh)

What, pray tell, is wrong with A Light in the Attic?  Hmmm, it apparently has suggestive illustrations and might encourage children to be disobedient.  Or "disrespect, horror and violence."

Excuse me while I go snort derisively.  There aren't any suggestive drawings in A Light in the Attic and if I had ever decided that breaking the dishes instead of drying them was a good idea, I'd have earned myself a hot backside and a one-way trip to my room for an extended grounding.  I used to have a ridiculous number of Shel Silverstein poems memorized - most notably "I Cannot Go to School Today" (said little Peggy Ann McKay, I have the measles and the mumps, a gash, a rash, and purple bumps....and so on and so on) which I used for a play audition (didn't get the part; I get verbal diarrhea if asked/forced to speak in public, probably why I always danced and sang instead of acted or gave speeches).  We had gales of laughter when reading "Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout will not take the garbage out" or when admonished not to pick your nose.  I never got any stupid ideas.

Now, I have an ornery and mischeivous little brother* who had a ornery and mischeivous little friend and the two of them could get into oodles of trouble in a blink.  They didn't look beyond the moment to see if there were consequences to jumping off the roof with an umbrella to see if you could fly (Mary Poppins can be a bad influence, too) or sticking an egg up the exahuast pipe of the mini-van (the two of them could be hell on legs when left to their own devices).  But even my reckless brother would have thought twice before breaking the dishes instead of drying them (he was also a pretty lazy kid so if I'd ever caught him even thinking about putting the dishes away I would have been very surprised) and mom kept him and his friend on a tight leash so they wouldn't get into too much trouble while thinking up silly things to do.

So go ahead - find where the sidewalk ends and fall up but don't bump the glump.

*Technically, I have two little brothers; they are the two halves of Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.  One could spend hours drawing and making things up using his imagination while the other could be found hurtling down a sheer cliff on his sled or playing naked in the birdbath.  They were both pesky, as alluded to in my Judy Blume post, and entirely allergic to chores (still are, actually).

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