'Where's Waldo?' among list of banned books in Texas prisons

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Updated 10:53 am, Saturday, December 2, 2017

DALLAS (AP) — The children's book "Where's Waldo? Santa Spectacular" is among the 10,000 books banned from Texas prisons, but Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" makes the cut.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice provided to The Dallas Morning News the list of banned publications and the more than 248,000 works that inmates are allowed to read.

Alice Walker's "The Color Purple," a Pulitzer-Prize winner for fiction and the 2005 best-seller "Freakonomics" also are not allowed. But two books by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke are OK.

There are a variety of reasons why the Texas agency bans books, such as graphic depictions of illegal sex acts or information on criminal schemes.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Where-s-Waldo-among-list-of-banned-books-in-12400524.php

[turbinetree]

1. And this is the state where damn near "all" of the educational material is sent to the

tykes and tykettes going to school---------------across the country----time to have my state band that state..............

Time to go to a city council and state house meeting

This is just fucked up, you can have racists books in a prison--------what the fucked do you think is going to happen in that society------------------everyone sitting down and having a kumbaya moment, have a racist and just finished a book by david duke and then bring it out into the prison yard-------------but this "justice agency bans books on graphic depictions of illegal sex acts or information on criminal schemes, like duke doesn't create some form of a information criminal scheme called racism, bigotry..............what am I missing here

draw me a graphic depiction............that this "duke guy' is just a fun loving human being, that endorsed what happened in Charlottesville VA, that got someone murdered---------------but its just fine and dandy to have his books in a prison society--------no wonder that state has a high crime rate


This is just fucked up

[Solly Mack]

2. That's fucked up.

[marble falls]

3. Sometimes I just don't want to be living in Texas and this is another reason to leave.

[TexasProgresive]

4. At least you have the beautiful hill country.

Not much scenery in Brazos county.

[marble falls]

6. There is that, but then we also have the history of having burned black families out of....

here in the '20's.

Mixed blessings.

Plenty of shame.

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. It's a sticker book

Perhaps they ban all sticker books.

[Journeyman]

7. This is an incredibly useless article without the reasons for why some books are banned . . .

[marble falls]

8. You think there might be a rational for banning Waldo and not Mein Kampf? ....

I find that single little bit of a fact about those two books alone quite informative in itself.

Welcome to Texas.

[Journeyman]

9. Well, Waldo is a sticker book . . .

That in itself may be reason enough for a prison to ban it. I have no idea. As I point out, without the rationale a simple listing of titles tells us nothing.

[marble falls]

10. I don't know that this particular Waldo book is a sticker book. Is it?

[PunkinPi]

11. Apparently it is...

It's Waldo's world, and it's all decked out for Christmas! Snowmen, skis, toys, and other wintry images from Waldo's previous adventures combine with unique new artwork to create a hide-and-seek holiday extravaganza. Hundreds of stickers add dimension to the hunt, while a special gatefold spread invites readers into Waldo's world. Young seekers will adore the stickers and the "create-your-own-Waldo" activity, while longtime fans will revel in the exclusive new art and classic search-and-find format. Finding Waldo has never been so festive!

https://www.amazon.com/Wheres-Waldo-Spectacular-Martin-Handford/dp/0763661597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512325237&sr=8-1&keywords=where%27s+waldo+santa+spectacular

[Journeyman]

12. I did some research. Found out it is. Also, I refreshed my mind on reasons for banning . . .

"The Color Purple" (violence, graphic sexuality, treatment of race relations and the nature of people's relationships to God). Whether these reasons played a part at all in the prison administration's decision is unknowable. Impossible to tell what the rationale is for allowing "two books. . .by David Duke" without knowing the titles -- or even if they refer to books by Duke, the white supremacist, or David Nelson Duke, who -- near as I can tell -- is a religious scholar, but whose work is credited by Wikipedia to Duke the white nationalist. (Can we truly believe a former Klansman wrote the book In the Trenches with Jesus and Marx: Harry F. Ward and the Struggle for Social Justice?)

So I have to conclude, as I stated before, without further explanation this article is beyond useless since it creates a false parity between a child's play toy and an execrable tome. More to the point, what I find exceptionally disturbing in the article is that there are only 248,000 books deemed acceptable by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Why? Are these simply the books the Department has on hand for checkout, or are prisoners restricted from ordering or receiving anything from what stands to be an incredibly lengthy proscribed list? We have no way of knowing since the article is so incomplete.

I for one am quite curious how contraband can be hidden in the cover of a pop-up book. (A new fact, added to this article since last night, which I just now re-read. The article itself seems somewhat shorter this morning as well, and a picture of multiple copies of Mein Kampf may have been added, though it could be my browser just didn't load them late last night.)

[leftofthestorm]

13. I would bet there isn't any Zinn or Chomsky either. nt