[HumiT]

When I was 9 my mum stopped me from reading Girls in love by Jacqueline Wilson.

[Jelephant]

I don't think I've ever really been banned from reading anything, but one time on holiday I finished the book I'd taken with me (Sabrina the Teenage Witch ) and decided to borrow mum's. No idea what it was called/ who it was by, but it was some crime novel where in the first chapter this woman gets sexually assulted with some weird sex toy that killed her (I seem to remember it as 'sucking' the life out of her, but that may just be a figment of my young, naive imagination ). I wasn't all that keen on reading anymore anyway, but after that my dad noticed and said "I don't think you should be reading that." It wasn't so much banned in that he made no attempt to really stop me though

[Octohedral]

(Original post by IPlayThePiccolo)
(ya know, the magic key, Biff, Chip and Floppy etc)

I REMEMBER THEM!!!! Wow, something I haven't thought of in 14 years.

My Dad said I shouldn't read Sophie's Choice (William Styron) until I was at least 25, but I've never had any other restrictions. I was a pretentious little **** at primary school though - I used to take Dickens novels in and pretend to read them because I thought it looked clever.

Spoiler:

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(Not that Dickens novels aren't amazing - I appreciate them now - just that I probably would have benefitted more from sticking to Harry Potter at the age of seven).

[TauMuon]

My primary school banned Darren Shan's books... obviously didn't stop us, we were all obsessed at that age

[PointeShoes-x]

Not at home, but I remember in secondary school if you were below year 9 you had to get a parent's permission to read The Lovely Bones.

[welshmun]

Not as a child but in secondary school there'd always be Fanny Hill in the library and whenever someone tried to take it out the teacher would always hide it

[FuzzySheep]

I don't remember being stopped reading anything in particular, I was encouraged to read wherever possible. To be fair, my parents aren't readers anyway, so I don't think they'd know much about whether a book was innappropriate, which isn't a bad thing really. I was thinking the other day that some Jacqueline Wilson books are a lot more serious than I had thought when I was younger, like Lola Rose and the Illustrated Mum.

[Kalliope]

(Original post by syrettd)
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.

Really did not need to know that!

[SilverArch]

(Original post by FuzzySheep)
I don't remember being stopped reading anything in particular, I was encouraged to read wherever possible. To be fair, my parents aren't readers anyway, so I don't think they'd know much about whether a book was innappropriate, which isn't a bad thing really. I was thinking the other day that some Jacqueline Wilson books are a lot more serious than I had thought when I was younger, like Lola Rose and the Illustrated Mum.

Definitely...I didn't understand The Illustrated Mum when I read it the first time, but when I read it again years later, I was thinking 'wow, this is pretty heavy for a 7 year old' (although I am very glad that I was never banned from books like that).

And when I was reading Tracy Beaker again, there's a bit where Tracy is going on about her mum being a movie star, and Justine says something like 'the only films your mum would be in are blue films'.....I didn't pick up on that the first time, but it could have been pretty awkward 'mum, what's a blue film?!!'

[screenager2004]

Nope I was allowed to read whatever I wanted as a kid.

I remember we were watching Women-directed cinema in Media Studies in year 12 (So I was 16), so one of the films we studied was Mary Harron's version of American Psycho. And my teacher saying "The film is nothing like the book, the book is really good but... uh.... maybe you should wait a couple of years before you read that it's pretty graphic".

But that just spurred me on to want to read it even more haha, I wish I had listened to his advice haha

[kingme]

I can't remember being 'banned' from reading anything, although my parents were eager to ban all sorts of other things. (yay for a sheltered childhood!)

Though I do remember my deeply religous granny buying me 'His Dark Materials' and then neglecting to give it to me :P I did read the first two, and got thoroughly bored by the third, but didn't really understand the deeper meaning behind any of it. Probably because I was 9.

[kingme]

(Original post by SilverArch)
And when I was reading Tracy Beaker again, there's a bit where Tracy is going on about her mum being a movie star, and Justine says something like 'the only films your mum would be in are blue films'.....I didn't pick up on that the first time, but it could have been pretty awkward 'mum, what's a blue film?!!'

This. I think I just didn't pick up on things.

Before I went to secondry school I read a series of books that turned out to be placed in the parental permission section. Yeah, there was a bit of crime and prostitution (but nothing graphic, I think) but I didn't pick up on anything that would make the librarian go 'did you not think it was a bit, umm, umm' when I asked why it was there.

[wikiellie]

My secondary school's library posseesed a copy of Jacqueline Wilson's 'Love Lessons', which no one was allowed to read until they reached year 9, mainly because the strictly old-fashioned school librarian thought that the scene in which a teacher and student kissed was inappropriate and indecent for 12-13 year olds!

Perhaps even funnier, was the first day that the library opened in September of Year 9, and there was a queue of 50 people wanting to take the book out (cue: stampede as soon as the doors opened).

[SophiaKeuning]

Nope.

[medbh4805]

I remember wanting to read Stephen King books when I was a child and not being allowed. Thankfully when I went to secondary school all the "classics" like the Austen, Brontes etc were put in the senior fiction section, and if you were in KS3 you needed a note from your parents to get them out. This fact enabled to me to persuade my mother, and opened up books like A Clockwork Orange, Lolita and the aforementioned Stephen King to me at the ages of 12-14 that I otherwise would have missed out on

[The Lyceum]

I had a similar thing ^, desperately wanted to read Dumas but the librarian wouldn't allow it without a note from my parents. Neither of whom actually cared what I read, provided that I was actually reading. I periodically got my children's Iliad taken away from me due to acts of "violence" (they mean heroism tbh) and my parents would let an 11 year old me read some of the more gruesome histories but that was about it. By the time I got to 13/14 they really didn't even pretend to monitor me. Awesome times.

[syrettd]

(Original post by IPlayThePiccolo)
OH I do remember going on holiday when I was around 12 and I finished all my books quite quickly. My mum had just finished The Time Traveller's Wife but she didn't let me read it cos of the *whispers* sexy bits. though tbh YA fiction can be pretty bad about stuff like that so I'd probably got the gist of all that kinda stuff alreadt

Probably the sex scene where he has sex with himself. I was like WTF??? when I read it at 19.

[riotgrrl]

My mum found me reading Tipping The Velvet when I was about 13 and tore it up and put it in the bin lest it make me gay (too late). It was only because she noticed the cover had two women on it, I could read pretty much anything so long as it had an inocuous enough cover because she's never heard of any books.

Nowadays I actually help my parents censor my sister because one time she read A Little Princess and had nightmares about our dad dying for weeks afterwards. She's a delicate soul xD I let them know what will be too upsetting- no way is she getting her hands on Goodnight, Mr Tom!

[tsveta]

my mum caught me flicking through 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov when I was about 10 and took it off me. I read it when I was 16 and yeah, I found it disturbing.

[medbh4805]

This thread reminds me of another story, when my mother was doing A level English Literature, she had to read DH lawrence's The Virgin and the Gypsy. My very catholic grandfather found it, saw the title and decided burning it was an appropriate course of action I am very lucky in many ways