The book under scrutiny is 2010′s “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk” by Dav Pilkey, who has apologized, saying it “contains harmful racial stereotypes” and is “wrong and harmful to my Asian readers.”
The book follows about a pair of friends who travel from 500,001 B.C. to 2222, where they meet a martial arts instructor who teaches them kung fu and they learn principles found in Chinese philosophy.
I bought all the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn books recently. Trying to think of what else might be banned one day. Got to get PAPER, not KINDLE copies of things before they get banned. I also bought the uncut version of Stephen King's The Stand b/c it has "the n word" in it and I am scared it'll be banned as well.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Underpants books were popular when my boys were young. I never bought any. I always thought of them as books for kids who otherwise wouldn't read anything. But since education isn't the point of school, there's nothing lost by banning one Captain Underpants book. These kids won't be able to read at all.
ReplyDeleteGeek
Captain Underpants is exactly how my husband got some of the 'learning-disabled' boys in his classroom interested in reading. Mad Magazine is also a good resource for getting boys who aren't interested in reading, reading. He caught flack for the Mad Magazines, but hey, whatever sparks interest.
DeleteMy kids were Captain Underpants fanatics. We were fine with it, up until one of the later books where the author barfed out a bunch of poison about evil, stupid, capitalist, conservative Christians. And made one of the main two protagonists gay (they traveled to the future, where one had married a man and was of course raising kids). Apparently Pilkey was pissed off because some parents somewhere wanted some of his books banned from schools for being too gross, so he took it out on his perceived enemies in his next book.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, once again the left eats its own.