Anne Frank, Pornographer

A mother in the Christian state of Michigan has registered objections to students reading the diary of Anne Frank, which has been issued in a version that restores material expurgated by the girl's father from the original edition. The mother, whose daughter is in the seventh grade and aged presumably about twelve or thirteen, took exception to passages in which the diarist documents her physical self-explorations. The mother pronounced these passages "pornographic"; personally I think they are a bit clinical to merit that label, but of course tastes can vary in such matters. The mother is concerned because her daughter found the passages "uncomfortable", and it is a self-evident truth that books should not make their readers uncomfortable; certainly not while the said readers are themselves experiencing the serene moral and psychological restfulness of puberty. The mother also believes that books should not give out information that it is "really the parents' job" to dispense. None of this means that the mother is trying to ban books, of course; she is only trying to get other people to ban one book from the school which her daughter attends.