9 Books Banned for Incredibly Stupid Reasons

Back in 1987, an installment of Where's Waldo was released that ended up being banned. This is because, in the process of searching for the stealthy, striped protagonist, one could see a topless woman. She was, of course, incredibly tiny, and also was facing away from the reader, but still. The sensual curves of the female spine were apparently enough to get the book nixed.

Police associations asked for the book to be banned because, in Stieg's world of animals, cops were pigs. Based.

This book covering a girl’s struggles with growing up was banned in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin for daring to mention menstruation. Yes, it’s definitely better for young women to think that this is only happening to them and also that maybe they’re dying?

Wisconsin continued their path of absolute fear of even a whiff of sexual content when they banned James and the Giant Peach. The reason? The spider licks her lips in the book, which was, in their eyes, unforgivably sexual. I personally wouldn’t introduce legislation that centered around me getting turned on by a spider, but hey.

I promise the title of this article isn’t “Books Banned in Wisconsin” but it’s getting close. Usually if you hear a book of poems were banned, you’d think they were counter-culture creeds or sexy sonnets, not Shel Silverstein. Apparently, A Light in the Attic “glorified Satan, suicide and cannibalism,” which has definitely made me want to re-read it.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was banned many places in the South for depicting child abuse. By child abuse, of course, they’re talking about the part of the book no one even remembers where Max is sent to bed without supper.

This is a picture book about animals and shapes, and there isn’t a single thing in it even the strictest nun could find fault with. Unfortunately, it was banned by the Texas State Board of Education because they thought the author, Bill Martin JUNIOR, was another author named Bill Martin who wrote books like Ethical Marxism.

Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus was banned in 2022 for cursing and a picture of a naked woman. Which seems reasonable enough, if you don’t know that Maus is about the Holocaust, and if you’re having a hard time with a titty, you’re going to really struggle with the genocide stuff.

The 10th edition defined “oral sex.”