By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — What should be expected from boards of education across the country, now that books like Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Art Spiegelman’s Maus have been banned? Here’s a list of stories on the verge of being proscribed and the rationales for doing so.
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: Donald Trump warned us about the war on Christmas. Children reading this story will emulate the Grinch and turn this country into an atheistic Whoville.
Little Red Riding Hood: A wolf assaults a young girl with the aim of eating her. QAnon hates this book which is a parable about Democrats kidnapping children and eating them.
Corduroy: A stuffed bear loses a button, but this snowballs into unbuttoning everything and stripping until the bear is bare.
Harold and the Purple Crayon: With his purple crayon, Harold starts drawing everything he imagines. After that, he joins a street gang and tags every surface he finds destroying property values.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: Giving a cookie to a mouse is like allocating welfare to the lazy poor. It makes them dependent and demanding to have more handouts.
Alice in Wonderland: An innocent young woman takes a hallucinogenic drug and symbolically falls into a world of shady characters. Just ask Gracie Slick why this book should be banned.
Curious George: George is captured in Africa by a man in a yellow hat who transports him on a boat that sails across the ocean to bring him to a zoo. White children will immediately feel ashamed because this book is a blatant allegory about slavery.
The Ugly Duckling: All the ducklings mock one of their siblings for being ugly until he grows into a swan. This will make bullies feel uncomfortable about harassing their peers who are different. Moreover, it implies that there was interspecies sex between the mother duck and a swan.
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.