Elderberries and Sunflowers

 Librarian Trevor held a volunteer meeting today.  Actually, his official title is 'Director' which, to me, is less informative and seems a little haughty for village libraries like ours.   He wisely held the meeting the hour before the library opened and had coffee and donuts waiting for us.  A good start to a successful meeting is timing/location/ and shamefully plying your audience's vices.  We had a good turnout w/ only two volunteers who couldn't make it.  Trevor had a full agenda going over the next three months and what activities he has planned for each week.  There is even a 'Banned Book Week'.  The discussion there was do we display books banned in the last five years or over the last century?  Picking books banned recently usually means those w/ LGBT etc. content and that might result in some raw emotions.   We'll go w/ historically banned books which were banned for a whole host of reasons.  When I got home I checked books in my private library and found a number of the books have been banned:

Alice in Wonderland - U.S. in 1960's, promotion of drug usage

Lord of the Rings trilogy - Alamogordo NM in 2001, being 'Satanic'.  Copies of the books were burned.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - U.S. in 1885, described as trashy and conflicting w/the views of the community

1001 Arabian Nights - Egypt in 1980's, accused of being obscene and containing references to vice and sin.  This book actually is erotic, misogynistic, racially bias, and horrific in parts but I assume that U.S. censors have only read the children's abridged version and the rest of us are adult enough to understand it was that area's folk lore in that period of time.

The Works of William Shakespeare - Florida due to 2023 law, sexual and gender-bending content in Romeo and Juliet and The 12th Night.  Fortunately, Florida decided banning Shakespeare went too far.

As I checked farther, over half of the fiction books in my collection had been banned at some time somewhere.  I assure you my collection is not salacious.  (To be completely honest I do own a copy of 'The Joy of Sex' but c'mon, that's a classic.)