Laguna Niguel : Library Displays Books That Some Would Ban

Shel Silverstein’s book of nursery rhymes, “A Light in the Attic,” is not allowed in some school libraries in Wisconsin because it “encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.”

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” was taken off some school shelves because it “contains profanity and racial slurs; Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” because of its rough language and sexually explicit scenes.

These and other books that have been challenged or banned on similar grounds during the last year are on display at Dana Niguel Library on Niguel Road this week in conjunction with National Banned Books Week 1986, sponsored by the American Library Assn.

Branch manager Lucille Hutcherson said she and her staff found more than 100 books on the library’s shelves that are on the library association’s list of books “considered dangerous enough by some groups that they would try to keep others from having access to them.”

The exhibit will continue through October.