by Persis M. Karim

About the author: Persis M. Karim is an assistant professor of English at San Jose State University in California.

How does a society that vigorously and sacredly regards its right to freedom of speech, so willingly and unquestioningly engage in censorship on a regular basis? The answer, of course, is that book-banning, the most widespread form of censorship in the U.S. today, is aimed specifically at children, and is successfully practiced using the rationale that we are protecting the youth of this country from the potentially dangerous effects of the ideas and representations contained within these so-called undesirable books. While the arguments supporting the banning of certain books in elementary and high school curricula and school libraries range from charges that a book is pornographic to "full of gross evils" to "undermining parental...