My librarian aunt in Boise says Captain Underpants still gets complaints in 2024, and I think that proves the point | Banned Book Breakdown - Free To Speak
My librarian aunt in Boise says Captain Underpants still gets complaints in 2024, and I think that proves the point
She told me last month that three parents filed formal challenges against Dav Pilkey's books at her branch this year alone, which surprised me because I always figured the whole outrage over silly potty humor books died out back in the 2000s, so now I'm wondering if the real issue was never the underpants jokes at all but just how easy it is to challenge a book nobody's actually read.
Something people dont talk about enough is how the challenge form itself creates the problem. Think about it, you can walk into a library, fill out a one page paper saying a book is bad, and now staff have to spend hours reviewing it, pulling it, sitting in meetings about it. That is a huge amount of work for something you never even had to prove you read. Meanwhile nobody ever files a form praising a book or asking to keep it on the shelf, so the only voices that get counted are the angry ones. Your aunt is basically seeing a system where it costs nothing to complain and a lot to defend, and the underpants thing is just the easiest target because it sounds silly in a headline.