Letters to the Editor: Hey, Huntington Beach book banners, kids find a way to look at what they want

To the editor: Even more than Gustavo Arellano’s excellent column on library censorship, the headline, “Huntington Beach wants to keep ‘obscene’ books away from children. Good luck,” took me back to my early 1960s high school days.

In our Shakespeare textbook, “Romeo and Juliet” was sprinkled with asterisks indicating where some of the Bard’s words and phrases had been deleted to protect our adolescent sensibilities.

An enterprising student handed each of us a sheet of paper as we entered the classroom one day. He had gone to the town library, researched all the naughty bits, typed them up and then made mimeograph copies to distribute.

Everybody was delighted, none more so than our teacher, who proceeded to conduct a very entertaining tutorial and discussion on Elizabethan language and literature.

Preston Neal Jones, Hollywood

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To the editor: I want to thank the Huntington Beach City Council, particularly the four conservative members, for providing an excellent teaching moment for my children, both of whom are of voting age.

They have learned that all politics are local and that engagement is a must. What they saw at the meeting where the council decided to limit access to certain library books was vast governmental overreach, prejudice and ignorance.

These unnecessary and ridiculous culture wars along with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion will hopefully make the GOP irrelevant in 2024.

Lisa Shook, Huntington Beach