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Bruce Dean's avatar

Great topic, very timely - thanks!

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Graham Jordan's avatar

There seems to be a negative shift ( MAGA America and other places too) away from Critical Thinking. I have a family member who moved his entire family away from one educational system to another, because of that shift.

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jparr's avatar

Your comment is so important. The move away from critical thinking skills in the social sciences in the K-12 curriculum is a huge problem in many school districts. Critical thinking skills enables people to understand the complexities of life and that everything is not a black or white issue. Life is complex and students need to know that and need skills to handle complex issues.

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jparr's avatar

Thanks for sharing this information. Its very important to understand how nudity fits into book bans. I think it also illustrates the importance for the nudist community to establish relationships with other groups who face discrimination in various ways that are considered outside the norm. Allies are important on many levels.

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ROJO's avatar

Books banned because nudity was referred to? WTF?

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BOPBadger's avatar

I thought that the nudity that got MAUS banned was the frame showing a man discovering his dead partner in a bath and a naked female breast is visible in the frame. Maus is a difficult book with many troubling images of violence. There may be arguments to restrict it to younger readers, but nudity is not one of them. The decision to ban a book because of a single image feels like maybe the people banning the book were uncomfortable with it, but couldn’t identify why, so just picked one image to hang their argument on. Perhaps this says more about the American sensitivity to nudity and their desensitisation towards violence.

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Carlos Cotero's avatar

Si desde niños se les inculca que el nudismo es algo tan natural como la vida misma, en la pubertad y adolescencia no deberían existir tabúes sobre el cuerpo desnudo y con estos libros se reforzarían estos conceptos naturales del nudismo.

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the naked gentleman's avatar

Having a book banned is never a good thing, but it's nice to see Maurice Sendak's brilliant picture book, "In the Night Kitchen," recognized here.

Maurice and I were friends, in and out of touch from our meeting in 1980 until his passing in 2012. He wasn't one to shy away from depicting childhood nudity as natural, innocent, and sometimes joyful. Check out his work in these lesser-known titles which, to my knowledge, were never banned:

Maurice Sendak's elaborate paintings for his own "Outside Over There" (1981) include a 2-page spread of dancing naked babies; more accurately, they're goblin imposters pretending to be babies.

His delicate pen-and-ink drawings for Randall Jarrell's "Fly By Night" (1976) show a young boy who flies nude late at night (or dreams that he does?). Jarrell's writing is absolutely beautiful, and paired with Sendak's drawings it makes for a truly lovely little book.

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Timmy's avatar

I remember Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen from my boyhood. Loved the book , but at the time it never really occurred to me that Mickey is nude, it was just fun and innocent. Actually, looking back it was kind of cute.

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