If you’ve written a book, are writing a book now or are planning to write one, a word of advice: See if you can get it banned. It’s apparently good business.

The most recent example of this comes courtesy of the school board in McMinn County, which last month removed the Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” from its curriculum for eighth graders.

The board later defended its action, saying the book was removed because of “its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide. Taken as a whole the board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for use in our schools.”

Bear in mind, the “nudity” referred to involves mice characters, which is how Jews are depicted in the book. (Nazis are represented as cats, which I lament, but understand in the mouse/tormenter context.) Bear also in mind that the board took its action on what the United Nations had unanimously designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Art Spiegelman, the book’s author, who wrote it about his parents’ experience in Nazi death camps, said he was “kind of baffled” by the action.

I am not baffled, nor should anyone else in Tennessee be. Also recently, we’ve seen:

• An outfit calling itself Moms for Liberty lobbying, with various degrees of success, against sundry books in Williamson County schools. Among their assertions, according to The Tennessean, is this: “[W]e are not sending kids to learn about social justice.”

Two observations: 1. Why shouldn’t kids learn about social justice in school? 2. These people have a different definition of “liberty” than I do.

• A pastor in Mt. Juliet led a burning of Harry Potter and Twilight books over what he termed “demonic influences” contained therein.

More recently the pastor in question, Greg Locke, has threatened to expose the six witches he claims are members of his Global Vision Bible Church. I would call him a crackpot, but I’ve been told before that I should avoid ad hominem criticisms. So I’ll just say he has crackpot ideas.

• The Tennessee Legislature has various measures before it that would police libraries or curriculums. Included is a so-called Parent Bill of Rights Act that would, among other things, allow a parent or guardian of a school student to:

“Review the names of any teacher, substitute teacher, guest speaker, or other individual providing instruction to the parent’s or legal guardian’s student”

“[V]isit the parent’s or legal guardian’s student during regular school hours, including, but not limited to, observing the student’s classroom”

“Review the content of curriculum, teacher manuals, and textbooks for any classroom of the parent’s or legal guardian’s student. …”

There’s much more afoot there than potential book complaints. Under the guise of parental input, it’s an effort to intimidate professional educators to avoid any topics right-wingers consider suspect. And trust me, there are a lot of those.

Getting back to the book controversy in McMinn County, I’m not sure how much of the hand-wringing about it is warranted. For one thing, I gather that removing a book from a school curriculum doesn’t mean removing it from library shelves. Maybe high schoolers will continue to have access to it.

Of course, all of this plays out against a long history of book-banning, or efforts at it, both in this country and around the world. Some of the most-targeted works are also among the most-celebrated of literature: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Color Purple,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” and “Slaughterhouse Five.” They seem to have survived the assaults.

Along those lines, the McMinn school board action had what I am sure is an unintended consequence: “Maus,” published almost 30 years ago, zoomed to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.

And though it’s not the kind of thing that will put money into the author’s pockets, I note that as of this writing there are 134 people on the waitlist for “Maus” from the Nashville Public Library. Before the McMinn school board’s action, there were none. Zero.

All in all, this sort of thing has people laughing at our state. And at least one author laughing all the way to the bank.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]