From The Guardian:

The Vatican looks likely to call for a boycott of Angels and Demons, the prequel to the blockbuster film adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

Official Vatican newspaper Avvenire reported on Friday that it “cannot approve” of Ron Howard’s film, which is based on the eponymous book by Brown and opens worldwide on 15 May. The report prompted suspicions that the church is gearing up to call for a new boycott, after urging Catholics not to see the first film.

…except they are reputedly worried that a boycott could backfire and drive additional sales to the film. Full story here.

The Hamas-run Education Ministry on Saturday rescinded its decision to pull an anthology of Palestinian folk tales from school libraries and destroy copies, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, following a widespread public outcry.

Some 1,500 copies of the book [Speak Bird, Speak Again] were destroyed — the most direct attempt by the militant Muslim group to impose its beliefs on Palestinian society.

Link to the Yahoo News article

The New York Times has another story on The Higher Power of Lucky. According to the article, it all started when librarian Dana Nilsson posted a complaint on the LM-Net listserv. A passage I found amusing:

The book was in the high 600s on Amazon before Nilsson’s comments were publicized, but soon jumped into the top 40. Simon & Schuster had already ordered an extra 100,000 copies after the Newbery was announced.

Continue reading on NYTimes.com.

The New York Times posted a story on this a few days ago, but Times Online has their own article now:

An award-winning children’s book about a ten-year-old girl seeking answers about life has provoked an uproar in America because it uses the word “scrotum” on the first page.

[…]

The Higher Power of Lucky won the Newbery Medal, considered the Pulitzer of children’s literature, last month and has gone into a second print run of 100,000.

Continue reading on TimesOnline.co.uk.

Another book has found its place on ban lists around the country on the basis of protecting the delicate constitutions of American children.

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The rest of the article can be read here, and the definition of ridiculous can be found here.

From an article published today in the Evening Times:

Laura Mallory is considering an appeal after the Georgia Board of Education voted to keep the Potter books on shelves.

The board voted without discussion to uphold Gwinnett County school board’s decision to deny Ms Mallory’s request to remove the best-selling books from school libraries.

Dozens of literary masterpieces and international bestsellers have been banned in Iran in a dramatic rise in censorship that has plunged the country’s publishing industry into crisis.

Among the banned books are translations of Girl With a Pearl Earring and The Da Vinci Code. You can read the full article on Guardian Unlimited Books.

A picture book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin is getting a chilly reception among some parents in this village [Shiloh, Ill.] who worry about the book’s availability to elementary students — and the reluctance of administrators to restrict access to it.

You can read the AP article over on Yahoo News. If memory serves, this isn’t the first time people have tried to get And Tango Makes Three banned at a school library.