Banned book

I found an article discussing a North Dakota high school's decision to remove the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" from its collection.  The article also said that this book have never been removed from any collection.

It's not so much that they removed the book from the shelves that gets me it's the actions the parents and the board took to do it-NO ONE READ THE ENTIRE BOOK!!!!  How can you judge something that has not been entirely read?

This whole banning started when parents of an accelerated reader student chose the book to read.  The parents wrote on the reconsideration form that the book "implants thought patterns that are absolutely against what we try to instill in our students here at Beulah High. I realize that I have not read the book in its entirety, and maybe somewhere it doesn’t condone the sinful nature we are pointing out. But what we see is a very aggressive approval of … things we as a school (and a) community don’t approve.”

Right there they say they haven't read the entire book.

The article goes on to say that the board approved removing the book 4-3, and says that NONE of the board members read the book.  How can you decide to remove a book that you have not read?

Of course people were outraged (like me) and a few days later the board rescinded the banning and reinstated the book to the library.

This situation is one of the things that makes me so mad about banning books.  If someone brings up a point about a book and if you have the authority to say whether or not the book will be taken out of the collection I sure hope that research is done and the book is at least read.  "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is a true story about a murder in Georgia.  These reconsiderations need to be taken seriously.  And while I think that book banning is ridiculous-it is very important to hear both sides of the argument-look at the book in question at all angles.  

Since I have worked at the library I have only had two people complain about materials in the library-they were both movies-ones was about religion and the other was a anime movie that had nudity in it.  I don't think either one ever went farther than the person filling out the reconsideration form.  However we always offer it a person who voices an opinion about something-which is also important.

 http://www.ilovelibraries.org/news/topstories/beulah.cfm