An Update: Anne Frank Censored

In a follow-up to my post on Anne Frank in May, an exhibit at the New York Public Library entitled, “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter,” has a fascinating examination of three hundred years of the literature of young people. Tucked inside the exhibition is a section on books that have been banned in different parts of the United States for their content and depictions. Among those in this section was the unabridged version of The Diary of Anne Frank. 

Citing objections, the exhibition noted that Bobbi Johnson, Superintendent of the Culpeper County (Virginia) Public Schools argued that the unabridged version did not “reflect the purpose of studying the book at the middle-school level and could foster a discussion in a classroom that many would find inappropriate” (29 January 2010).