To: Administrators, teachers, and librarians.

From: School Board of Grant Borough, Subcommittee on Moral Rectitude.

Herewith and hereunder please find a supplementary list of books to be added to the list of books heretofore banned from classrooms, libraries, and rest rooms in all three Grant Borough Public Schools, along with the reasons for banning each book.

The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. Banned for promoting magic and other works of the devil.

The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope. Banned because it was, like, really long, so we had to assume there was obscene stuff in there somewhere.

Roget’s Thesaurus, by Peter Mark Roget. This is banned at the special request of Mrs. Wight, whose fifth-grade class has been looking into it and snickering for unknown reasons.

Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Sets an appalling example of bad spelling.

Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. Banned for promoting disruptive intelligence in young readers. Also because we have just found out that the author was a fraud: his real name was not Mark Twain at all!

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Banned for setting an unreasonably high literary standard, which is discouraging to aspiring writers among our students.

Constitution of the United States, by Rutledge, Randolph, et al. We are tired of students mounting successful court challenges to school policies, and have detained the most recent round of complainers at an undisclosed location.