The shelves in children’s room in Detroit Public Library were carefully cleaned from the Oz series. The books, as the director of the library, Ray Ulveling, declared, “have no value for children of today, encouraged negativism, disorientate young readers to accept a cowardly approach to life”(1). Therefore, in April 1957, Baum’s series were banned in this library the first time since it was published. A year later, in 1959, a checklist of “Books Not Circulated by Standard Libraries” was issued by the Florida Department of State. The books from this checklist were “not to be purchased, not to be accepted as gifts, not to be processed, and not to be circulated”(1). The logic of this bill was built on the statement, that banned books are “poorly written, untrue to life, sensational, foolishly sentimental, and consequently unwholesome for the children in your country”(1). Obviously, the name on the top of that list was Frank
The shelves in children’s room in Detroit Public Library were carefully cleaned from the Oz series. The books, as the director of the library, Ray Ulveling, declared, “have no value for children of today, encouraged negativism, disorientate young readers to accept a cowardly approach to life”(1). Therefore, in April 1957, Baum’s series were banned in this library the first time since it was published. A year later, in 1959, a checklist of “Books Not Circulated by Standard Libraries” was issued by the Florida Department of State. The books from this checklist were “not to be purchased, not to be accepted as gifts, not to be processed, and not to be circulated”(1). The logic of this bill was built on the statement, that banned books are “poorly written, untrue to life, sensational, foolishly sentimental, and consequently unwholesome for the children in your country”(1). Obviously, the name on the top of that list was Frank