As the new school year approaches, book banning is in the news again. The impression I have is that it is a fairly common occurrence in the United States, but less so in Canada.

The latest list of 200 books being removed from Edmonton Public School libraries has me wondering who is the bad guy. Or maybe it is that bureaucrats are afraid to use their brains.

Some of the older ones, I seem to recall, were on the curriculum when I studied English in high school. From that I would think they have some literary value.

The two hundred books supposedly have explicit sexual content. I can understand how that would make them inappropriate for some age groups, but there’s probably nothing in them that a high school senior doesn’t know about already.

At a glance, I think I have read 17 of the 200 books. And no desire to read most of the rest. I have met only one of the authors. Weirdly enough, because it is not usually a topic I would bring up, we did talk about the sex in the book, and her explanation as to why it was there made sense.

The crackdown was supposedly mandated by the provincial government, but the Premier is upset at the list. The intention apparently was to ensure students read material that is age-appropriate, not to ban classics.

Which has me wondering if whoever came up with the list of books to be banned by Edmonton Public Schools did so intending to create a public furor. Why else would you ban books that have been part of the curriculum for years?

We’ll probably never know, but I have my suspicions.