The Tennessee legislature recently passed a bill stating that teachers cannot encourage “gateway sexual activity,” as part of the state’s abstinence-based sexual education movement.

Seizing the opportunity implied by the new law, officials in Sumner County last week banned John Green’s Young Adult novel “Looking for Alaska” from the school curriculum because it contains an oral sex scene- one of two mildly-erotic passages in the novel. The book had already been banned as pornography in Knox County in March, 2012 after a parent protested that the book went against what she was trying to teach her child.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-looking-for-alaska/

Some call it fan fiction, while others call it “mommy porn;” but the fact is that whatever you call it, Fifty Shades of Grey, a New York Times #1 bestselling novel by E. L. James, has become an international hit.

The trilogy was originally conceived as fan fiction based on characters from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series- which itself has been frequently banned and challenged- and this has led many in the publishing industry to question where exactly fan fiction crosses the copyright line.

Literary merits and legitimacy aside, the biggest controversy surrounding the novel is over the sexual situations between the characters.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-50-shades-of-grey/

Hello and a Blessed Beltaine to everyone!

Well, here it is, the first day of a new month, and that means another issue of pagan Pages magazine and your favorite paranormal research column, Across the Great Divide, by R. Wolf Baldassarro!

What’s on tap for this month?

Last time I brought to light some interesting legends surrounding Detroit’s famous Belle Isle, but just off shore, a little more than a mile east, lies the small untapped wilderness known as Peche Island.

According to descendants of the French family, who once settled the island for nearly 100 years, Peche Island remains untouched even while existing in the middle of urban sprawl for one very good reason: it’s cursed.

Read on at:
http://paganpages.org/content/2012/05/across-the-great-divide-28/

For the third time in recent weeks the Banned Books Awareness series once again focuses on some rather disturbing trends from Canada. Incidents of censorship by the border patrol, negative reactions to fiction based on historical documents, and now it seems Dr. Seuss has been branded too political for the classroom.

Yertle the Turtle (1958) is one of six- yes, six- beloved Dr. Seuss titles that have repeatedly faced the ire of censors for various reasons; now a teacher at an elementary school in northern British Columbia has been told that a quote from the classic work has been deemed “too political” and the quote is no longer allowed to be displayed, or worn on clothing.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-yertle-the-turtle/

Last Thursday (4/19/2012), the Annville-Cleona School Board in Pennsylvania voted 8-0 to remove an award-winning children’s book, The Dirty Cowboy, by Amy Timberlake, from its elementary schools after a student’s parents objected to its illustrations.

Read on and share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-the-dirty-cowboy/

Lawrence Hill wrote one of the bestselling and most-popular Canadian novels of all time; but what does he do for an encore?

Hill, who will be in Edmonton this coming Tuesday (4/17/12) to deliver the University of Alberta’s annual Henry Kreisel lecture, knows how to follow up a smash hit. He’s just not letting it bother him much.

“I have a little mantra and it’s that I can’t really be responsible for a book’s commercial failure or success; all I can do is write the best book that I can,” Hill said in a telephone interview from his home in Hamilton, Ontario.

For his appearance next week in Edmonton, in a billed speech “On Banning, Burning, and Other Inspired Responses to Books,” Hill will reflect back on some not-so-positive experiences with his novel, The Book of Negroes.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-the-book-of-negroes/

Just two days before Deborah Merrick, Branch Manager at Merritt Library in British Columbia, was scheduled to burn banned books, members of the community came forward to stop her.

“People came in and said they didn’t want any books burned,” Merrick said. “I didn’t have a single person come out and say that burning books would be a good thing.”

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-banned-books-saved-from-burning-in-canada/

As orca attacks on trainers become increasingly violent, the warnings of Rose and other scientists fall on deaf ears, only to be realized with Brancheau’s death. Kirby covers the media backlash, the eyewitnesses who come forward to refute SeaWorld’s PR spin, and the groundbreaking OSHA case that challenged the idea of keeping these whales in captivity.

But, as with many books that expose the light of truth, there are those who wish for the public to remain uninformed and in the dark. So it is that Death at Seaworld joins the growing list of books to have its publication and distribution challenged in America. The interesting part is that this book isn’t even scheduled to be released until July 17, 2012 and since it wasn’t even finished until February, 2012, when the final draft was submitted to the publisher, none of those who oppose it have actually read it.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-death-at-seaworld-2/

Prompted by the unseasonably warm weather scores of people are venturing outdoors, eager to get a jump on summer fun. For many in the Detroit area that also includes picnics and other activities on historic Belle Isle.

But unknown to few, besides some lifelong citizens of the Motor City, Belle Isle is much more than a serene picnic experience; as with many locations with such a long and varied past, it also has its share of urban legends and ghost stories.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://paganpages.org/content/2012/04/6810/

The wit of cartoonists like Tom Toles, Mike Thompson, and the widely-popular Doonesbury strip by Gary Trudeau have amused and engaged readers for decades with their humorous take on the issues and subjects of the day, often poking fun at both sides of the debates.

Doonesbury is well known for its politically-motivated storylines; so much so that while some newspapers print the strip on their regular comics page, most publications place it with similar strips on an adjacent page, or in their Opinion and Editorial section.

The controversy of late is that Doonesbury has been censored because of recent storylines aimed at the birth control debate. The series of strips, which ran from March 13-17.

Read on and Share the Knowledge:
http://world.edu/worldedu_posts/banned-books-awareness-daily-newspaper/