List of most challenged books has surprising entrant

Every year the United States publishes a list of books most objected to at libraries and public schools, but this year’s list contained a surprising new entrant: the Bible.

According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom for the American Literary Association, the Bible makes the list not because of the sex inside its pages, nor because of the violence, but because it raises legal issues.

According to OIFALA director James LaRue, sometimes it’s about church and state, however so long as the library does not promote the views included in the Bible he says it’s not an issue.

It seems parents will also object to the Bible in schools if the church voices an objection to another book.

But the Bible finished in the lower half of those books challenged. It was sixth.

Where between 2000 and 2009 there were more 1,500 challenges for sexually explicit content and almost the same number for offensive language, do you think you know what the number one book on the list is?

If you said Fifty Shades of Grey you’d be close. That was number two.

No, topping the list was John Green’s Looking for Alaska. It was his first novel, written in 2005, and has won several awards in children’s and young adult literary categories in that time. It’s taught in many schools, but is seems the challenging content dealing — it’s based on a couple of teenagers who drink, smoke and swear quite a lot — with sexually explicit situations is what lands it in first place.