Dolson, Hildegarde. Please Omit Funeral (New York: Lippincott, 1975) 182 p.

Censorship strikes Wingate, Connecticut when a citizen decides there are too many "dirty" books at the Wingate High School library. The librarian, Miss Marcy Coving, is young and beautiful. She is often seen at the beach in a bikini. She is "quick and graceful." "her hair, which was the pale yellow of a newly sliced moon, was pulled back severely and tied in a hank. On her, it didn't look severe." (p. 4).

She remembered an ex-English Lit teacher she'd met in library school. The woman had told her emotionally, "they wanted me to teach a course in the Modern Novel--to relate to the present. I'd have had to stand up there and talk to the students as if I considered this dreadful modern stuff literature. And I couldn't do it, I simply couldn't. So I'm going to be a librarian."

The logic, or illogic, of it had fascinated Marcy. "But those same books will be in a library."

And the woman had said on a note of triumph, "All I'll have to do is check them in and out. I won't have to read them or talk about them." (p. 134).

Marcy simply believes in the "right to read" and resolves to replace books which are burned by an indignant parent.