As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post, I reached out to family and friends for ideas for this Year’s Banned Books Week.
My husband doesn’t read as much as I do, and never has, but as a teenager he listened to Heavy Metal, played games like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering, and played video games. So many times, he found that people who didn’t know anything about these media or genres labeled them as evil or Satanic. He said he would be interested in hearing more about that idea – about the “Satanic Panic” of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s* – the books and leisure activities that got slapped with that “Satanic” label by people that had no idea what they were really about.
Peer into my crystal ball…
The American Library Association keeps track of the reasons why books are challenged or banned. Since the ALSA has been keeping track, many books have been challenged for “magic and witchcraft,” “occult/Satanism,” and similar reasons. Some of these include:
The Harry Potter series (for obvious reasons)
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Witches by Roald Dahl (again, obviously)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle (for witches)
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam (for “Satanic references and cult symbols”)
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen (for “perceived advocacy of magic and witchcraft”)
Cohen also has other books on supernatural subjects banned for similar reasons.
The Goosebumps series (for “depicting occult or demonic themes”)
The Lord of the Rings
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
And I’m sure there are more that I’ve missed. While the ALA has multiple lists of multiple categories of books, not all of those lists state why books have been challenged. Those I listed above are the ones that I knew – or, strongly suspected and looked up elsewhere to confirm.
*Unfortunately, the ALA has only been keeping statistics on banned and challenged books since 1990, and has only been keeping track of the reasons for challenges for an even shorter time so, disappointingly, I can’t answer Jason’s exact question about which specific titles and authors were involved in that 80’s/90’s Satanic Panic period (aside from the big granddaddy of “occult-promoting books,” Harry Potter – but even Harry only dates to the late ‘90’s).
Additionally, while they are not on any of the official banned books lists on the ALA website, I do know that often roleplaying books such as Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade have been challenged due to the perceived notion that kids who play these games will be drawn into dark magic rituals or the occult. But as with many other pass-times (movies, video games…rock ‘n’ roll anyone?) parents and other adults are often quick to jump on This New Thing The Kids Are Doing and label it as “evil”… despite the fact that most evil thing a lot of D&Ders are doing is drinking way too much Mountain Dew.