I just found this question on Yahoo! Answers: a student at an apparently excessively strict Catholic school reacted to a list of banned books by bringing the books in question to her school and setting up a lending library out of her locker. It all started with Catcher in the Rye (what IS it about that book that gets it repeatedly tossed to the censorship wolves, anyway? I remember eagerly reading it when I was in high school hoping there would be something really exciting about it. Something ban-worthy. Got to say, my hopes of transgressive thrills were dashed.) Anyway, apparently a fellow student of hers asked to borrow her copy, because it was on the list.
You know where this goes: All the banned books suddenly became terribly interesting to a whole group of kids who might otherwise not have bothered to read anything at all. Suddenly they all wanted to get their hands on a copy of Paradise Lost, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Evolution of Man, His Dark Materials, Animal Farm, Bridge to Terabithia, and the Canterbury Tales.
So, this brave, smart kid took over the empty locker next to hers, and started a lending library.
And now there are dozens of kids busily reading classics, because they were told not to. I'm almost hoping the lunatic list (she posts some of the titles that are banned in her question, and it boggles my mind) was a ploy by the school, some kind of reverse psychology. I'm afraid, though, that it probably isn't.
