Get your bonfires ready, everybody — it’s Banned Books Week!

Sponsored in part by the American Library Association (www.ala.org), Banned Books Week “celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those … viewpoints to all who wish to read them.” Apparently, there are people out there who think that banning books because they contain undesirable material does more harm than good, breeding ignorance and suppressing free speech.

Oh, please. Next thing you know, they’ll be saying that abstinence-only education is bad, too. Let me tell you, I was given a good, healthy, abstinence-only education, and I know everything I need to know — like how if I don’t want to get pregnant I shouldn’t let a boy pee on me. Gross!

Needless to say, I don’t want my kids (Melvin is five and George is three) reading any of those dirty Judy Blume books — numbers 8, 32, 46, 62 and 78 on the list of the 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 to 2000 — and learning about heavy petting and menstruation. If they read about those things, they might want to start doing them. Ditto for the What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Boys (#61) and Asking About Sex and Growing Up (#54); I believe masturbation should always be followed up by hours of paralyzing guilt and fear. And I certainly don’t want my boys reading Lord of the Flies (#70) and getting marooned on an island and establishing a tyrannical dictatorship.

The list of the 100 most frequently challenged books is indeed useful, and I advise all new parents to laminate it and post it on the fridge so that if they catch their kid reading something verboten they can roll the list up, fill it with lead shot and beat him about the ears — but I also find it sorely lacking. Over the past few years, as I’ve labored to raise Melvin and George to be upstanding, coitophobic citizens, I’ve encountered several books so abhorrent that I was shocked to find they hadn’t been banned. As a civic service, I am raising awareness of these dangerous books by providing an annotated list, as follows.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak: lionizes Max, a disturbed young man who will no doubt grow up to be a depraved criminal. After an evening of troublemaking, he goes so far as to threaten his mother by saying he’ll “eat [her] up!” Max’s delinquent behavior is then encouraged when he takes a magical trip to a land of “wild things,” where he leads the beasts in a pagan dance ritual. At the end of the book, Max is forgiven without so much as a single flog.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown: normalizes talking to inanimate objects.

Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt: encourages children to touch things willy-nilly. This is bad enough in a household filled with breakable objects and clean, white walls, but I gravely fear what these grope-happy children will want to touch when they reach adolescence.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: endorses gluttony.

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper: idolizes irrational selflessness. The Little Blue Engine struggles up a hill, risking life and wheel, and for what? To deliver a bunch of toys to the needy children on the other side. If you ask me, the Shiny New Engine and the Big Strong Engine had the right idea. Additionally, in this story the female Little Blue Engine “triumphs” over the two male engines; this is a very discouraging message for boys.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss: advances an unrealistic view of social mobility.

The Winnie the Pooh series by A. A. Milne: Where do I begin with this one? Every single character in this book suffers from a personality disorder or psychosis. Piglet has generalized anxiety disorder. Eeyore has major depressive disorder and, judging by the pink bow on his tail, is gender dysphoric to boot. Tigger is histrionic. Owl is narcissistic. And Winnie the Pooh clearly suffers from a crippling addiction, spending all of his time searching for a quick “hunny” fix.

Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish: implicitly supports affirmative action for the profoundly retarded.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein: anthropomorphizes plants. I suspect that this book is singlehandedly responsible for rearing an entire generation of tree-hugging hippies. Also, Mr. Silverstein’s previous career as a Playboy freelancer reveals his true moral perversity.

Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World: gives a rosy, culturally relativistic view of the world. Also advocates the extremely unsanitary practice of taking enormous sausages on the Tokyo public transportation system. The story in which Couscous the detective disguises himself by cross-dressing in a harem costume is distressing, to say the least.

A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams: humanizes the poor.

I urge you to contact your local bookstore and demand that they remove these books from the shelves. Do not, under any circumstances, expose your children to any of these titles; they will be inoculated with the seed of degeneracy, which will blossom in their tender young minds and render them the brainwashed vessels for messages of corruption. If you truly love your children, you will monitor every single stimulus that enters their brains and deflect anything unwholesome.

Remember: Ignorance is strength. I think that’s from a book, but I don’t know which.