Censorship Watch: Harry Potter and the Idiotic Removal

Harry Potter's not in line with the "character goals" of an elementary school in Lake Los Angeles. Apparently battling evil isn't appropriate for young 'uns.

I was particularly amused by the person who said that Harry Potter was rejected because it was fantasy. "We want books to be things that children would be able to relate to in real life". Guess that knocks out all historical fiction as well. Oh! And sci-fi. And magical realism. And... And.... And....

As one member of the Child_Lit listserv said:
"Presumably the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, The Mahabharata, The Aeneid, Metamorphoses, Beowulf, The Divine Comedy, The Morte D'Arthur, The Faerie Queene, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progess, et al will be amongst the other fantasy works being withdrawn from that library? It's
frightening that people can still come out with that kind of Gradgrindian
nonsense. (Oops! I forgot, Dickens wrote fantasy too...)"