The author of what has been described as the definitive dictionary of slang is gobsmacked, gutted, throwing up bunches, honked, hipped and jacked like a cock-maggot in a sink-hole. A North Carolina school district has banned the dictionary under pressure from one of a growing number of conservative Christian groups using the internet to encourage school book bans across the US.The book is the revised edition of Cassell Dictionary of Slang by Britain's leading lexicographer of slang, Jonathon Green, and it joins five other books formally challenged by the Wake County school district, including The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, Junie B. Jones, Some Sneaky, Peaky Spying by Barbara Park, Reluctantly Alice by Phyllis Reynolds, and In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. According to the Guardian, school officials acted after pressure from a local Christian activist group, Called2Action, whose website asks people to "join our E-army today to take your place on the front lines of the battle for our children's future." Not surprisingly, they're not wild about Harry Potter either.
Perhaps the group and school board confused the Dictionary with another one of Mr. Green's collections, The Big Book of Filth: 6,500 Sex Slang Words and Phrases.
Green is quoted as saying, "I'm very flattered. It's not exactly book-burning but, in the great tradition of book censorship, there never seems to be the slightest logic to it."
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