Last year, I gave in to horribly un-American behavior. Confident that my citizenship would not be revoked if indulged in censorship, I picked up a thick sharpie and blackened out offensive words in A Child’s Garden of Verse on my daughter’s shelf.

Other “classics” just plain aren’t on her shelf. I’m confident her childhood can be quite complete even if she isn’t exposed to every classic. After all, there are many brilliant authors influenced by modern sensibilities who write equally marvelous books. Instead of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, she’s read Louise Erdich’s Birchbark House series. Has she missed something? Sure. Yes. But our time as children is limited, and really, aren’t those children who haven’t visited the Birchbark House because they’ve been so busy following Laura from one Little House to another, also missing something? Or, worse, perhaps they’re unquestioningly absorbing age-old prejudices…

I’ll confess my desire to…