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Originally Posted by Ustwo
On the other hand...
[*"Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy and political viewpoint]
Was pretty much shown to be a political hack piece with false data used to create a politically motivated conclusion.
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Be that as it may, the answer to poor scholarship or politically biased work isn't censorship, it's countering the argument presented with a better one.
I'd really prefer not to debate the merits of the book here as that's not what's at issue.
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The cynical side in me wonders if this is another form of advertizing for booksellers 
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Booksellers use it as an excuse for promoting certain classic books that end up on the list year after year, true, but that's a far cry from saying that the purpose has anything to do with book sales. The ALA has an agenda, of course, and that's to promote libraries, literacy, reading, and intellectual freedom, and they seem to welcome the publicity they get from booksellers.
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If anyone needs a specific recommendation from this years list, the first two,
The Chocolate War and
Fallen Angels are excellent YA books, and the last two,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and
Of Mice and Men are both very good for adults or high school aged kids.
In the Night Kitchen is one of the great children's picture books.
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ngdawg Many of those books are required reading in the schools here.
To Kill a Mockingbird??? And my kids read Captain Underpants books when they were in 4th and 5th grade!!!
These lists boggle the mind....
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This is the very reason why many of the books end up being challenged, and why so many are YA books.
A common scenario is that a teacher assigns a book to her class, usually for English or Social studies (our physical science teacher has his students read a novel each semester, but that's unusual). Sometimes it's the students who object, but far more often, it's the parents. In past decades, schools sometimes took an all or nothing approach, insistng that students be required to read the assigned material or fail that portion of the course. This foolishly forced parents to attack the assignment of the book for any student.
Most schools currently have an opt out system in which a student, with parental consent, can refuse to read a particular book on moral or ethical grounds, or because the find it offends or violates their religious beliefs, and so forth. A book of equivilent length and difficulty can be substituted. This seems an obvious solution, one that could make everyone happy, right? Not exactly. Parents and activist groups on both sides of the political spectrum will still attack the assignment of a book to
any student. Opting out their own children isn't good enough for them; if they find the book objectionable, then nobody's children should be allowed to read it.
I remember a few years ago one celebrated case. A white woman challenged
Huckleberry Finn based on the idea that it was racist. The school offered an alternative book for the girl to read. She'd be given an independent study packet and allowed to read and do the work in the library. A perfect compromise, isn't it? A few other parents thought so, opting their children out. The student doesn't have to read a book she objects to, parents who don't object have their children reading the book.
This wasn't good enough. The book had to be romoved from the curriculum altogether. Her reasoning? Her daughter was being deprived of the free public education required by law, because she wasn't getting the benefit of the teacher's expertise and class discussion. Fortunately the courts were of the very reasonable position that the school was providing the required instruction, but she was choosing not to take advantage of it. Interviews made it very clear that she was attempting to protect the black students from the book, which seems more than a bit condescending to me.
Sometimes such attacks succeed, and books are removed from the assigned reading lists, but kept in the library. Sometimes this isn't good enough. Parents and activist groups, or both together, have sought to have books removed from school libraries, again, playing censor for other people's children.
We've actually had parents attack a list of books distributed to students at the end of the year as recommended summer reading. These aren't assignments, nor are they books the kids are checking out of the school library. It's a list of books the school has put together that we (the school district) think would benefit the students as independent summer reading. They'd have to go buy or check the books out of the public library. The only way a student could be exposed to one of these books is if they chose it and made the effort to seek it out themselves.
It's mind-boggling.
Gilda