Pinkerton 451

By Margaret Lyons in Arts & Entertainment on May 21, 2004 2:24PM

Man, we haven’t had a banned book case in so long. Mostly because banning books is totally fascist. An Evanston mom is trying to change a 25-year banless streak, but the Evanston Public Library is holding its own.
Mary Beth Schaye was reading her three-year-old daughter Pinkerton, Behave!, a children’s book about a dog who is extremely naughty but saves his family from a burglar, when she turned to a page where the burglar is holding the mom at gunpoint. Schaye requested the book be removed from the library, but the library board voted 6-0 to keep the book on the shelves.
Chicagoist will admit that holding someone at gunpoint is an unusual plot twist in a children’s book; perhaps too violent, and at least representative of a time when gun brutality played a very different role in society. Parents might not want to read this book to their child, and they can make an informed decision about that because the goddamn burglar is on the front of the book.
Pinkerton, Behave! is part of a series of books about the frisky Great Dane, and it is written and illustrated by the amazing Steven Kellogg, who is totally best. Pinkerton the album doesn’t exactly behave, but is required listening. The most challenged books of the 90s could also be called “Chicagoist’s Middle and High School Reading List.”