Were you ever banned from reading certain books/authors as a child?

The Qur'an

No joke. My mum is a strict Roman Catholic and she forbid me reading any other holy books. For RE, we were given a little Qur'an book (I think it was written by Oxford), and she pretty much 'confiscated' it. She's so silly, considering I read the Verdas at school.

Somehow I doubt that...

I remember when I was six and really into reading and took my mum's book because it was glossy and new (mostly she has old, dusty books). It had lots of murder and sex scenes in it. I still remember one where she was pregnant and he bit her nipple to get some of the milk during sex. I don't remember my mum ever saying I shouldn't read it; in fact, I kept I think she even gave it to me for a little while.

My parent's are baffled by the fact I read, the rest of my family joke I'm not their biological child because of my interest in books and going to Uni for English Lit. My Dad only goes as far as reading the newspaper, never cover to cover though, and my mum confided in me that she hasn't read an entire novel in over 15 years.

They wouldn't know what authors wrote what or what was right for me to be reading. Beyond the colour coded children's books in primary school indicating what level I should have been at, my parents took little interest in what material I read from then on.

When I was about nine, so years ago, a girl in our class got hold of the Judy Blume book Forever and lent it out for sweets, with the select pages turned over. It would be so tame now, but at nine years old reading about losing your virginity on a rug and then pursuing a ski instructor was the most taboo thing ever. One of the girls who borrowed it got busted by her mum, who apparently went orbital.

I moved schools but I reckon that girl must be an entrepeneur or something now, young adult porn in exchange for sweets, she knew how to make something of nothing.

Six and sex??? Which book was that, by the way?

It was the opposite with me. My parents actually bought me books on sex/crime/etc. Didn't do me any harm (I think ).

Still, not quite as bad as my friend's parents who bought her an 18-rated game which was pretty much porn on a Playstation (or whatever it was back then).... when she was 10.

I was sorting through all my books, especially the ones I read when I was 7-9, and I noticed that actually many of the books I read at that age, were really written for adults or teenagers. Eg several holocaust memoirs with a lot of nasty details and so on. I must have been about 11 when I took 'Belle du Jour' off mum's shelf and read that (it was glossy new and looked interesting! Can't say my 11 year old self was that impressed by it though). From about that time, I was allowed to use Mum's library card to get books when she wasn't around

So my reading material was never censored. I was allowed to read anything I wanted, whenever I wanted. But my friends weren't. And I notice quite a few parents ban certain books, or authors (eg. someone banned their 8 yo from reading Jacqueline Wilson. By that age I had read much grittier things in adults books) altogether. Mostly they say 'kids need a childhood' as the reason for banning them

I don't think reading lots of adult books affected me that much. Certainly by the time I was 12 nothing I read would have shocked me any more, but I wasn't traumatised too much by reading those books (well, a few nightmares after reading about Auschwitz as a 7 yo, but nothing too bad). I also read classics and Harry Potter and all that, but if I saw an interesting adult book, I read it as well.

My questions to you guys - How much reading freedom did you have, and what was the most adult book you read as a child? Would you ban your kids from certain books? And is banning children from reading certain books/authors a good thing or a bad thing?

When I was in 2nd year a high school we got a new librarian who when though the books and removed all the books that had any mention of sex, drugs, radical ideas etc. She even had her own little "gestapo" who would check the books for her. I mentioned a book to one I thought was my friend and she had it removed from the school library stock.

Very Nazi-ish!

We had a "sixth form only" section, but this sounds pretty extreme!