The Laconia Daily Sun Newspaper features Georgia Heard’s crystallized banned books exhibit. Click here to read.
Here are just a few samples of my crystallized banned books. If you’re interested in purchasing one, please contact me directly.
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
book, borax, 7 ½ x 7 ¾ x 4 ¾ inches
The beloved 1926 story of a legendary bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, has been banned throughout the U.S. because “talking animals are an insult to God.” Polish officials blocked a playground in Poland from using Winnie-the-Pooh as its mascot because “he is half naked which is wholly inappropriate for children.”
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
book, borax, 9 x 6 x 4 ½ inches
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s novel has been banned, or challenged, nearly every year since its publication. First pulled from an eleventh-grade classroom at a high school in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1994, and then banned from the Morrisville, Pennsylvania High School English curriculum that same year because “it was a very controversial book; it contains a lot of very graphic descriptions and lots of disturbing language.” In 2014, it was challenged on a suggested reading list for high school students in Columbus, Ohio by the school board president because it was inappropriate for the board to “even be associated with it.” A fellow board member described the book as having “an underlying socialist-communist agenda.”
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
book, borax 10 x 2 inches
Consistently challenged for containing profanity. The novel was accused by a Texas school of containing “gross evils.
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
book, borax, 6 x 6.25 inches
In 1996, school authorities in Merrimack, New Hampshire pulled copies of Twelfth Night off the shelves because cross-dressing and “fake-same-sex romance” were deemed in violation of the district’s “prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction.”
Click on the ALA website to find out more about Banned & Challenged Books.
