Some public administrators meet and decide that certain books by certain authors like Mark Twain and Harper Lee should be banned because they make readers uncomfortable. Oh, my! Uncomfortable!  

I’m quite sure that when Harper Lee wrote her celebrated “To Kill a Mockingbird”, she had ‘uncomfortable’ exactly in mind. Since it examined southern culture and questioned its morals, she must have known her book would make at least some, and likely many readers squirm in their skin. Furthermore, she must have hoped such readers would bear their discomfort until the end of the book, then shift whatever perceptions and attitudes had caused their discomfort to a better place — for their own good and the good of all. Many authors design their books to cause at least a little discomfort with the same hope and motives in mind. And some of these books wind up being banned in one place or another.

It’s doubtful Mark Twain set out to cause discomfort with his short story “Eve’s Diary”. Although he probably wanted to cause discomfort with many of his novels, stories, and speeches, Twain didn’t put much into “Eve’s Diary” that would upset anybody. Nobody, that is, except humorless, scriptural literalists. He did raise the ire of at least one of them.

Public administrators banned ‘Eve’s Diary’ solely because Eve was illustrated in ’summer costume’. Mark Twain did indeed endorse the illustrations, and he made fun of the people who objected to them. But Twain’s publisher made the decision to illustrate the story, not Twain. So at least with this book, you can place Mark Twain and Harper Lee in separate categories.

As Twain told it, the illustrations were carefully examined, in detail, by two librarians at Charlton Public Library in Massachusetts before they decided to ban it.

After 105 years, modern administrators have reconsidered the original decision and restored “Eve’s Diary” the shelves.

We suspect Twain probably intended the story for adult readers. It is one of six creation stories he wrote near the end of his life. All but two of the six carry content that could easily offend thin-skinned to mildly-sensitive preachers, so he must not have been thinking of kids when he wrote any one of the stories.

When we combined “Eve’s Diary” with “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” to create “Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Eve and Adam”, a book earmarked for middle-school readers, we wondered whether public (and private) administrators would object to illustrations of Eve and Adam in ’summer costume’. We decided that, since modern media routinely exposes young readers to much more flesh than adults publicly encountered in 1906 when ‘Eve’s Diary’ was published, we were probably safe as long as the illustrations were discrete, which they are.

But now we are back to wondering. Sales of the book are flatter than flat even after extensive advertising. Could it be the book is being banned in fact if not officially? If I were an administrator of any kind, I would expose youth to Mark Twain as much as I possibly could. Furthermore, I would see it this way: if the discrete illustrations we include in our book were to offend or excite them, they do not watch enough T.V. and they are playing too thin a selection of video games.

Okay. I am being facetious. And maybe dead wrong. Check out the gallery and look at some of the most risque of the illustrations in "The Diaries of Eve and Adam", and judge for yourselves. Then compare them to this supposedly risque illustration in the original "Eve's Diary". Is this or any of the illustrations you see inappropriate for middle school students, who are the youngest of today's young adults?  If so, how old would would these our modern young adults need to be before the illustrations would rank as appropriate?

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