Chris Crutcher must be slipping. The Spokane author failed to make the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most challenged books for 2007.

In an interview early this year, Crutcher told Spokesman-Review reporter Pia Hallenberg Christensen that he’d been on the list for three years in a row. “And I say that with a note of pride,” he added.

Crutcher has published nine novels and a bunch of short stories. He’s a popular lecturer. He can handle the bullies who want to stifle frank discussions of awkward topics that, like it or not, are part of their children’s world.

For much of the country, though, intellectual freedom is under attack. That is why the American Library Association observes Banned Book Week every fall. The idea is to alert the public to the drumbeat for censorship of works by authors like Crutcher. And Mark Twain. And John Steinbeck. And Maya Angelou.

The most challenged books of 2007 are in the bull’s-eye mostly because of various sex themes, including gay and lesbian issues – the kind of subject matter that reportedly attracted Mayor Sarah Palin’s disapproval in Wasilla, Alaska.

Phillip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass” is objectionable to some conservative Christians because of its religious views. Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” offends some liberals because of its treatment of race. But most book protests get back to sex.

Responsible parents have a right to assess their children’s readiness for complex reading themes. But the relentless push by the squeamish to take certain books out of schools and libraries is an insistence on making those decisions for other people’s children, too.

The American Library Association reminds us that the freedom to speak is pointless without freedom to hear.