A Challenged Book

For this week’s book, it was hard for me to choose a book since I do not really know any challenged books. I immediately went to Google and looked up, “Books that have been challenged.” I noticed a children’s book called, “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” and it caught my eyes.

All in all, this book leaves a good lesson to be learned. Within the story, Sylvester finds a magic rock that grants him wishes when he is holding it. Shortly after finding it, a lion approaches Sylvester, and he frantically wishes that he was a rock. His parents start a search party with all of the other animals in the town after he is turned into a rock. After months of trying to find him, his parents decide to have a picnic on the rock that happens to be Sylvester. His father finds the magic pebble and places it next to his lunch on the rock. Once the pebble is laid down on Sylvester, and he wishes himself to be his old self again. The moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

After reading it, I wondered why it was challenged. I found out it was because the portrayal of the policemen as pigs sparked some controversy. During the Censorship Workshop, we learned that 45% of books that are banned are from public libraries themselves. After doing some research, this happened to be true for this book. Some public schools and libraries decided to ban it from their institutions. In all honesty, I have no idea why this book was challenged during its time. As a child reading this, I would learn the overarching lesson not so much what the animals in the town were being portrayed by.

If I were to teach elementary school, I would definitely include this book in my library. It teaches young children that the people close to you, like family and friends, are what matter the most. Children would not correlate a pig to something that is “bad” or “wrong” like the librarians and educators did with this one.

-SK