Claim: List catalogs books banned from the Wasilla, Alaska, public library by Mayor Sarah Palin.



Status: False.



Example: [Collected via e-mail, September 2008]







This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners. This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners. This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.

When the librarian refused to ban the books, Palin tried to get her fired. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Blubber by Judy Blume

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Carrie by Stephen King

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Christine by Stephen King

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cujo by Stephen King

Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen

Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite

Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Decameron by Boccaccio

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Fallen Angels by Walter Myers

Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Forever by Judy Blume

Grendel by John Champlin Gardner

Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Have to Go by Robert Munsch

Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman

How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Impressions edited by Jack Booth

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

My House by Nikki Giovanni

My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara

Night Chills by Dean Koontz

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer

One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl

Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz

Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

Separate Peace by John Knowles

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Bastard by John Jakes

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth

The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder

The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks

The Living Bible by William C. Bower

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders

The Shining by Stephen King

The Witches by Roald Dahl

The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder

Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff

Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth







Origins: One of the many political rumors swirling around Alaska governor Sarah Palin after her selection as the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee had to do with the subject of books: That during her tenure as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she had wanted to remove certain books from the city’s public library, or had tried to have some books censored, or had banned a lengthy list of books (as reproduced above).

According to the Anchorage Daily News, around the time Sarah Palin first assumed the mayorship of Wasilla back in 1996, she initiated some speculative discussions with the city’s librarian about the possibility of removing some “objectionable” books from the public library:





In December 1996, [city librarian Mary Ellen] Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her — starting before In December 1996, [city librarian Mary Ellen] Emmons told her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman, that Palin three times asked her — starting before she was sworn in — about possibly removing objectionable books from the library if the need arose. When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often attends council meetings, was there. Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name. “Sarah said to Mary Ellen, ‘What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?” Kilkenny said. “I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, ‘The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'” Palin didn’t mention specific books at that meeting, Kilkenny said. Palin herself, questioned at the time, called her inquiries rhetorical and simply part of a policy discussion with a department head “about understanding and following administration agendas,” according to the Frontiersman article.





According to that same article, no evidence has been uncovered that any books were actually censored or removed from Wasilla’s library as a result of these discussions:





Were any books censored [or] banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, checked her files and came up empty-handed. Were any books censored [or] banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, checked her files and came up empty-handed. Pinell-Stephens also had no record of any phone conversations with Emmons about the issue back then. Emmons was president of the Alaska Library Association at the time.





Given that, as yet, there is no documentation of any books having been banished from the Wasilla library by Mayor Palin, or even of which books she may have had in mind when she broached the subject, whence comes the considerable register of tomes now being circulated as “the list of books Palin tried to have banned”? The purging of the selections enumerated here from a public library would surely outrage any educator or book lover, with the listing including classics of literature by authors from William Shakespeare to William Faulkner, works by popular contemporary writers such as Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, and even such seemingly bland reference works as Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

One obvious clue that this list must have been cobbled together from some source other than discussions that may have taken place in Wasilla in 1996 is that several of its entries (most notably the books in J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series, which began in 1997) hadn’t yet been published back then. In fact, versions of this list have been circulating since at least as far back as 1998, and is actually a catch-all collection of titles said to be “books banned at one time or another in the United States.”

Political debate over why Mayor Palin was inquiring about banning books has become a major presidential campaign issue in 2008, with different parties involved in the dispute providing conflicting information:





Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and the mayor wanted to understand how such disputes were handled. Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and the mayor wanted to understand how such disputes were handled. Records on the city’s Web site, however, do not show any books were challenged in Wasilla in the 10 years before Palin took office. Palin notified Emmons she would be fired in January 1997 because the mayor didn’t feel she had the librarian’s “full support.” Emmons was reinstated the next day after public outcry, according to newspaper reports at the time.





Last updated: 12 September 2008









Sources:



Burke, Garance. “GOP Campaign Downplays Palin Book-Banning Inquiry.”

Associated Press. 12 September 2008.

White, Rindi. “Palin Pressured Wasilla Librarian.”