I love Shel Silverstein. Some of my favorite poems are found in A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. So when I started putting together lists and research as I was working on our big Banned Books Week event at the library, I was shocked and dismayed to see A Light in the Attic on one of the lists. But then I thought, "oh, yeah, there's 'Crowded Tub.'" 'Crowded Tub' is a delightful little limerick that goes:
There's too many kids in this tub.
There's too many elbows to scrub.
I just washed a behind
That I'm sure wasn't mine -
There's too many kids in this tub!
And I remembered that that there was a sketch of a naked butt at one point - either that went with the poem about a guy trying to scratch that itch in the middle of his back, or the poem about a bee that spells out a message on someone's butt by stinging him. There was also the poem advising children to sprinkle pepper in their hair so that if they got caught by a child-eating witch they would be too spicy to eat.
Parents always have issues with butts and the idea of kids being naked for some reason. Witches always cause problems, too.
But I started looking into it and none of those were the reason why the books was challenged. As it turns out, the two poems that apparently caused the controversy were a poem advising kids to drop dishes while washing them so as to get out of dish-washing duty, and the poem where a girl threatens that she will die if she doesn't get a pony - and at the end of the poem she does. (It's kind of the kids' version of Anachie Gordon.)
So apparently sarcasm is what got the book actually pulled off the shelf in at least one school system. There were complaints about the scary stuff - the witch and all that - but the idea of obstinate children was apparently what got the book labeled as #51 on the most challenged and banned books of the 1990's. Seriously?
It's worth noting that my mom, who would not let me watch Nikelodeon's Salute Your Shorts (partly because of the word "fart" in the theme song), was perfectly fine with my reading and quoting Shel Silverstein.
I think humor - sarcasm being part of humor - is an important element to teach and encourage. Humor is a kind of creativity, and creativity seems to be falling by the wayside in many school systems. We're getting so caught up in electronics, cookie cutter math and science tests, and the possibility that we might offend somebody, somewhere, years from now, that humor and sarcasm are often the subject of controversy these days (and apparently as far back as the 90's, too).
Also, fun little bit of trivia, Silverstein wrote the lyrics of both "A Boy Named Sue" and "Unicorn" (the song about how the Unicorn missed getting onto Noah's Ark).