I can't believe we're still fighting book banning. Crazy right-wing folks were doing that back when I was in high school in the 80s, you know, to protect us children. I distinctly remember Huck Finn and 1984 being banned. I went out and bought them immediately!

If we're going to educate children to function in the world, they're going to need to be able to approach all sorts of people, all sorts of races, all sorts of genders and sexual expressions. We live in a diverse and ever-changing world and no amount of book banning by pearl-clutching white housewives is going to change that.

And that's even before thinking about the tremendous benefit of seeing yourself in a book, or someone like you as a kid. As a mixed-race woman who was once an awkward mixed-race kid, I would have loved to have read about someone like me.

Oh, and, last I heard, reading is at an all-time low. We should be encouraging young people to read - anything. Use the books as lessons, as discussion points.

This may make me sound horrible, and I mean no disrespect to any Christians out there because many of them are wonderful, well-meaning people. However, I often find the book-banning crowd wave their Bibles around for justification. I'd love to go into one of these meetings and suggest banning their Bible from schools. I mean, it does bring up such unpleasant topics as slavery, patriarchy, plural marriage...and on and on. We can't be giving the precious children any ideas now...(that was sarcasm, I'm sure you got that).

So yeah, sorry for the long comment, but book banning really pisses me off.