Banning books

Something which Harry Potter has introduced me to is the idea that people to this day try to ban books. While I sort of have the awareness that there are people who try to ban certain films, the idea that this might be happening with books in fully democratic countries was something I hadn't considered at all. But maybe that's just because I don't read enough to consider that a book might be offensive.

Anyway, here are the 10 most frequently challenged books of this century. Harry Potter tops the list. I must say I'm very curious that The Da Vinci Code is not up there somewhere with all the noise the film made!
This is a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books in the 20th century. Some of the titles puzzle me to no end - what is Roald Dahl doing on this list? lol (I do love his books, but I don't understand why The Witches or James and the Giant Peach are offensive lol)
Of course I think being included on this list is actually a big compliment (some of those names and books are quite something!). And certainly J.K.Rowling seems to be thinking along the same lines - see her comments about this in one of the news articles on her site. I think I might actually use this list as a way to develop my reading ;-P It seems like a lot of those would be really worth a read (Google's Banned Books page would probably be a good place to start finding out more about them).

Of course the reasons for people wanting these books taken out of public libraries are probably just as bizarre (and therefore interesting) as the lists of challenged titles themselves. Naturally, because I'm a rather pathetic reader, I have only heard of some of the stories of why people keep trying to ban Harry Potter, but if anyone knows any of the stories behind challenging some of the other titles on those lists, I'd love to know! :)
Some light on why books in general are challenged can be found here. And below are two articles on Harry Potter which I found very amusing.

Here is an article about Laura Mallory, who believes the Harry Potter books are trying to teach children witchcraft and are a major reason for some of the shooting tragedies that have taken place in American schools.

This on the other hand is a slightly older article. It features comments from the current Pope's chief exorcist which in itself amuses me, but the quotes are even better. Harry Potter is called the "king of darkness, the devil" and the characters in the books are compared to Hitler and Stalin.