Banned Book of the Day: Thursday, September 30th
Shel Silverstein was one of the greatest poets this country has produced. (Have you read The Missing Piece?) They tried to ban this book quite often and in quite a lot of places when it came out. Eventually they succeeded at some elementary schools, in the mid-’80’s.
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If You Have to Dry the Dishes, by Shel Silverstein
If you have to dry the dishes
(Such an awful boring chore)
If you have to dry the dishes
(‘Stead of going to the store)
If you have to dry the dishes
And you drop one on the floor
Maybe they won’t let you
Dry the dishes anymore.
Also, a funny poem about a girl who dies because she doesn’t get a pony, which some parents definitely did not find funny. Because they feared their children would threaten to kill themselves if their requests for ponies were denied? Or because they feared their children would grow to believe that they’d die without ponies?
Also, obviously, the poem above encourages dish-breaking. And that’s definitely not a good thing.
The Other Day at Portrait... 
Did parents of the 1980s (I was one) not have a sense of humor? Were they so insecure that they believed a silly poem about breaking a dish would influence their children? If a kid of mine read the whole book I would have let them break a dish just for fun!
Donna