Banned Books Week: Where's Waldo?

I wanted to participate in all the Banned Book Week blogging shenanigans without actually having to read anything. Lucky me, Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford was one of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s. 


I went to the library to check it out, excited to revisit Hanford's alliteratively titled modern classic about a bespectacled adventurer who travels to crowded locales and becomes lost among the wacky assemblage of people. I was ready to dissect the book, pick it apart! Yes, I'd find Waldo, but I'd also examine each page with a scholarly eye and try to determine how something so quaint and seemingly innocuous could also be so controversial. Sure, Where's Waldo? has no discernible literary or educational value, but in my humble opinion, that isn't enough to get a book banned. 


When I went to retrieve Where's Waldo? from its shelf in the picture book section--the library computer assured me that it was checked in--it wasn't there. I don't know if librarians get their jollies by hiding copies of Where's Waldo? or if the book was missing because some Christian fundamentalist stole it, but rather than waste precious moments of my life searching for the book, I just checked out Where's Waldo? in Hollywood--figuring that it would be even more risque than its precursor, considering the iniquitous setting.

If you've never "read" Where's Waldo? in Hollywood, allow me to summarize the plot: Waldo walks though various movie sets (a silent movie, a western, some confusing sci-fi-dinosaur-horror epic, etc.). It's hard to spot him at first but then you find him and then the book is over. 


At first glance, the only morally questionable thing about the book is the price: A whopping $12.99. 


But when I looked a little closer, I found these shirtless prisoners...

Obviously a nod to HBO's Oz and prison sex in general. There was also this drunk cowboy, holding a bottle, and winking as if to say, "drink alcohol, kids. You and I both know that it's the coolest!"

Otherwise, the book is harmless. I'm not sure why the original was banned (something about side boob? I don't know) but I imagine the complaint was lodged by someone who was just really frustrated about not being able to find Waldo and then manufactured some bogus moralistic reasoning to justify the grievance. 


I mean, c'mon. It isn't as if you're looking for Waldo and then when you find him, he looks like this: