We all get the urge to censor books. At least I think so 😉
We’re reading a good book, and then…ughhhhhhhhhh something makes you groan.
Why is that there? Why on earth did that seem like a good idea? Why did authors have to be so racist/fatphobic/horriblehumanbeings/whatever?
It’s often not so easy to censor a book. So usually, if it bothers me, it goes into the rehoming pile. I certainly have enough books left, and there’s no mandatory book list my toddler will be required to read by 18. (I know it feels like there is, but there isn’t. I promise. I’m a perfectly well-adjusted adult who has never read the Little House series, though I do plan to read it. Whether I read it to my kids remains to be seen after I’ve read it myself. I know all this is practically heresy in the homeschooling world.)
But I like Harold’s Circus by Crockett Johnson. And my toddler loves it too. It’s why she insists on pretending to fly on the flying rings every half hour, holding something in the air over her head, demanding that I get her down from the high rings. Groooooan.
But there’s a particularly offense page about the “fat lady” of the circus.
No thank you. But Gd had mercy, and the offending two pages are the same page. It can be removed without changing the story. We just didn’t read it for months, but she’s wising up to our method. Drastic measures had to be taken. Remove the content or remove the book.
I have a few other beefs with the book, but they’re pretty picky. I’ll keep the book until they bother me enough.
So I tore the page out. Believe me, it hurt me more than it hurt the book. Tearing a page out of a book?? Heavens to Betsy. Sacrilege! It tore out cleanly, thank Gd, yet I still hesitated to throw it in the recycling bin. Once I threw it away, it’d be real. No backsies. No taping or gluing it back in. But I knew I’d never put it back in the book.
Get out of my house. Good riddance.
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