Dr. Seuss’s beloved 1963 picture book Hop on Pop encourages children to take a pop at dad, according to an irate reader who demanded that the Toronto Public Library ban it from its collection.

It’s one of seven items included on the library’s annual list of patron requests to reconsider material on its shelves.

The complainant not only wanted the book trashed for allegedly pushing children to use violence against their fathers, he or she insisted the library apologize to dads and “pay for damages resulting from the book.”

Whether the offended party was actually sincere doesn’t matter, said the library’s director of collections management, Vickery Bowles, adding librarians take all complaints seriously.

“It’s a very respectful process,” she said. “We don’t pass judgment just because it’s something like a Dr. Seuss book.”

The library’s materials review committee kept the book, saying it remains a staple of children’s literature and because it actually tells kids “not to hop on pop” (emphasis theirs).

This is the same work of fiction that former U.S. First Lady Laura Bush, an ex-librarian, said was her favourite children’s book. She told The Wall Street Journal in 2006 she even had photos of her twins, Jenna and Barbara, jumping on the belly of their father, George W., when he read to them. No assault charges were laid against the girls.

Many reader complaints are settled in person at the library, said Bowles, and only a few actually make it to the formal process. Rarely is an item removed from the collection, although it has happened, especially when items are found to contain inaccuracies or their content is dated. No books were taken off the shelves last year.

The annual list averages about half a dozen — an extremely small number considering 32 million items circulated in 2013, said Bowles. Still, the list offers an interesting and often humorous glimpse into the minds of offended library users.

One was adamant that Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, co-authored by the loudest of Fox commentators, Bill O’Reilly, be junked as “it contains falsehoods because it concludes (President John F.) Kennedy was killed by (Lee Harvey) Oswald alone.”

Another patron was bothered — and not so hot — about an audio version of Sandra Brown’s romantic novel, A Kiss Remembered, which includes depictions of sex, remaining in the collection, saying it “offends current societal morality.”

The other four challenged items were:

Complete Hindi for allegedly containing inaccuracies regarding the Hindi and Urdu languages.

The murder mystery Flesh House, in which people are dismembered and their body parts sold as meat in butcher shops. A reader found it “shocking and disturbing.”

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The Adam Sandler film That’s My Boy, because a viewer found the movie depicted the “shocking and illegal” sexual relationship between a 13-year-old boy and his teacher as “humorous.” The committee noted that the viewer did not watch the entire film, otherwise he or she would have discovered that the act was indeed recognized as illegal.