Effort to Ban Library Books Is Increasing : Censorship: The county system has rejected seven of 10 requests to remove specific volumes this year. The remainder are awaiting decisions.

Ventura County libraries are facing a rising number of requests to ban books, including efforts to purge an Elvis Presley biography and a Christmas book featuring a drawing of Santa Claus on a toilet.

Within the last year, the county system’s 15 branches have fielded 10 requests to remove books from its 675,000-volume collection, up from a single request the previous year and six requests from 1984 to 1988.

The book-banning efforts, while directed mostly at children’s books in community libraries, have reached into the schools. Simi Valley educators this week will consider pulling a library book because a parent took offense at its “pictures of scary wolves and people with masks,” a district official said.

Allan Jacobs, an associate superintendent for the Simi Valley Unified School District, declined to reveal the title of the book under reconsideration, saying the matter is being aptly handled by a special committee.

Amanda Walker wants the county library system to pull “Remember The Alamo,” a 1958 children’s history book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Penn Warren. Walker, 36, of Ventura, said the book contains slurs against Latinos and American Indians that children should not read, even if the passages reflect the ignorance of earlier times.

“I’m not a book burner. On the whole, I say if you don’t like it, don’t read it,” Walker said. “But it ticked me off when I found my son reading a book that said Indians were lazy and stupid.”

The efforts to remove books from circulation have alarmed county library officials, who have received an unprecedented number of “requests for reconsideration of library materials.”

Review committees have rejected seven of the 10 requests this year, with Walker’s appeal and two others awaiting decisions. The volumes retained on the shelves include a book on werewolves, an illustrated children’s book on slugs and a novel for teen-agers based on the life of a female Indian chief who took several wives.

“Most of the complaints are coming from older Baby Boom parents who are much more involved in their children’s upbringing,” said Sunny Church, manager of the county library’s children services division. “The problem is that they’re trying to force their values on others.”

Dixie Adeniran, director of the Ventura County Library Services Agency, would not release names of those who have sought to take books out of circulation, contending that they have a right to confidentiality that supersedes open government laws.

Suzi Skutley, manager of Mr. Nichols bookstore in Santa Paula, said parents should screen what their children read and not overreact by denying others access to books they find objectionable, often without reading the entire text.

“A lot of times we shortchange our children and don’t give them credit for the intelligence we’ve given them,” said Skutley, whose store held readings Saturday of passages from once-banned books to close Banned Book Week. “These complaints are almost funny, until you realize there is serious intent in what these people are doing.”

The increasing attempts to sanitize Ventura County’s public book collection come at a time when national watchdog groups are reporting a sharp rise in censorship, including attacks on the works of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the explicit songs of the rap group 2 Live Crew.

People for the American Way, based in Washington, documented 244 attacks nationwide on educational materials and library books during the 1989-90 school year, with California accounting for nearly a third of the incidents. Three fundamentalist Christian groups spearheaded most of the challenges, the group said in an annual report released last month.

Judith Krug, director of the American Library Assn.’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said only 15% of all censorship incidents ever come to public attention, the remainder being settled quietly by librarians and school administrators.

“So much censorship in the United States goes undocumented, because someone objects to some aspect of a book and it silently disappears from a shelf,” said Ed Elrod, co-owner of Ventura Bookstore and an anti-censorship activist.

Oceanview School District Supt. Robert Allen said last week that he removed “Catcher in the Rye” from the Oceanview Junior High School library in Oxnard. Allen said he agreed with a protesting parent that the novel was too mature for junior high students.

“It was taken off the free reading shelf,” Allen said. “It’s not in the library now.”

Allen said the removal of the J.D. Salinger novel, one of the most often challenged books since its 1951 publication, didn’t amount to book banning, but rather reflected a judgment on its appropriateness for sixth- through eighth-graders.

“I can’t support forcing material on kids that parents don’t approve of,” Allen said. “The child will be caught between two fires.”

Many teachers have become cautious in selecting classroom reading lists, sensing that certain titles will be vetoed by administrators, Elrod said.

Popular young-adult novels such as “Less Than Zero” and “Bright Lights, Big City,” in which the protagonists develop severe cocaine habits before paying for their vices, would be rejected by many administrators despite their moral endings, he said.

“So instead, kids are still reading ‘Silas Marner’ after how many years?” Elrod said. “A book may be 50 years out-of-date, they won’t even read the Cliff Notes, when they could be reading something contemporary that will challenge them.”

Books questioned across the country in the last year have included perennial targets such as the works of James Baldwin, Judy Blume, Allen Ginsberg, John Knowles, Shel Silverstein, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Alice Walker.

Many recent targets simply lacked happy endings. Junior high novels were banned or challenged in Washington and Oregon for being “devoid of hope and positive role models,” for “the presentation of divorce as a fact of life and derogatory remarks about friends” and because “the character gets away with bad behavior.”

In Goose Lake, Iowa, a book called “Revolting Rhymes” faced expulsion from the high school library because parents complained that “the boy who is turned into a mouse will have to stay a mouse the rest of his life.” The library director for the Santa Paula Elementary School District moved the same book from an elementary to a junior high library a few years ago after a parent complained.

“I just handled it quietly, and frankly, a lot of librarians do that,” Patricia Alderson said, adding that the book was originally purchased for fifth-graders. “Sometimes I just put the book aside and put it back after a while.”

Ventura author Ray Maloney said he was startled when he recently learned that his novel for young adults, “The Impact Zone,” was challenged by a library patron in Multnomah County, Ore. The book, which includes profanity and sexual references, is about a 15-year-old surfer who leaves Ventura to search for his father in Hawaii.

“There seems to be a belief these days that people should be in lock-step, marching in the same direction at the same speed,” said Maloney, who works as a technical writer for an area defense contractor. “That’s what gets a society in trouble.”

A 37-year-old woman, who declined to reveal her name, said she asked the Camarillo Library last week to pull “Please Don’t Kiss Me Now” by Merrill J. Gerber from juvenile book racks. She said a librarian recommended the book, which contains four-letter words and sexual references, for her 13-year-old daughter.

“When you read things, they’re retained in your brain. If they stick it in the adult section, no one will bother to check it out,” she said.

Unlike the county system, the Oxnard Public Library has not received a formal request to pull a book since 1984, Director Gail Warren said.

Librarians said informal complaints about a book’s content outnumber requests to pull books from circulation by at least 10 to 1.

Brad S. Miller, a reference librarian at the Thousand Oaks Library, said he and his colleagues take great pains to explain to people why a book should be retained even if they find it distasteful. He said the only recent censorship attempt at the city-run library centered on the film “The Last Temptation of Christ” and a patron’s assertion that it should be pulled from the library’s video section.

“There is a lot of earnestness in what the people feel,” Miller said. “There has to be long and careful explanations as to why the material is here.”

Simply voicing their dissatisfaction is a catharsis for most people, Warren said. “A lot of people just need to get it off their chest. They usually go away realizing there are others in the world with different tastes.”

“It’s a library responsibility to have a variety of points of view available on controversial matters so people can come in and make up their own minds on a subject,” Adeniran of the Ventura County Library Services Agency said. “The taste and interest of one particular party ought not to deprive other people of their right to read something of interest to them.”

CHALLENGED BOOKS

Listed below are six of the 10 books challenged in the county library system within the last year .

“Elvis” by Albert Goldman, a biography that includes details of Presley’s drug and sex life. The protester sought its removal from the adult section because “so many young adults look up to Elvis, his use of drugs and sexual perversion may make young people emulate this behavior.” Request denied.

“Slugs” by David Greenberg and Victoria Chess. The picture book of human-sized slugs suggests gnarly things for children to do with them, including “tie them to a bottle rocket,” and “use them in banana splits.” The slugs stuff their tormentor in a garbage can. The protester asked, “Can you imagine what a 5-year-old boy could fry, blend, microwave, and dissect?” and said the theme of the book was “Slugs are not good for anything.” Request denied.

“Father Christmas” by Raymond Briggs. A picture book in which Santa is ill-tempered about having to make his annual rounds. A children’s literary magazine praised the book for depicting a Santa who “is still hard-working and faithful,” but who “can also be grumpy and impatient--in short, thoroughly human.” The protester objected to a drawing of Santa on a toilet and “the negative overview of Santa’s view about Christmas.” Request denied.

“Meet The Werewolf,” by Georgess McHargue. A book detailing the werewolf legend that includes a recipe and incantations on how to become one. A literary magazine noted that the book “comes right out and says that ‘human beings cannot really change themselves into wolves.’ ” The objector wanted the book banned after discovering his son and a friend trying out the concoction and spell. Request denied.

“Woman Chief” by Rose Sobel. A historical novel for teen-agers based on the life of a Crow woman who rose to lead her tribe and took several wives, as was the custom for Crow chieftains. A reviewer for “School Library Journal” found “the personal relationships of this unorthodox woman . . . are only hinted at.” The protester said the book illustrated that “a woman has an opportunity to rise to the pinnacle of her society” but objected to “an implicit theme that lesbianism is all right.” Request denied.

“Games End” by Milton Dank. A children’s novel whose main characters are involved in the French Resistance during World War II. The protester objected to profanity and “insinuations to adultery-prostitution situations” on one page that might lead children to think “that this type of behavior is modeled by responsible adults.” Committee decision is pending.