Renowned children's author Mem Fox says a message from her literary agent that one of her books had been banned in the US state of Florida made her "howl with laughter".
Fox has defended the 1988 picture book Guess What? which has reportedly been included on a list of titles in Duval County in Florida as part of a crackdown in schools on books deemed to be not age-appropriate.
"It's pitiful, isn't it? It's like, the Americans keep killing each other with guns and then they do things like this as well," Fox told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz.
"You just feel sorry for them, you just think, 'people, you're so unsophisticated, you're so pitiful'."
Fox said she had travelled to the US more than 100 times in her "working life" and said Americans in general had been "very good" to her.
"They were so kind to me, they were so, so good, so generous, so warm-hearted, so affirming. I just grieve for them," she said.
Last year, Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which governs public schools in the state.
It banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity and was dubbed as "don't say gay" by critics.
"In the state of Florida we're proud to stand for education, not indoctrination, in our schools," Mr DeSantis said in a speech earlier this year.
While Mr DeSantis has denied a book ban had taken place, labelling that description a "nasty hoax", activist group Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFTRP) — has been compiling lists of apparently censored titles,
It has listed Guess What? and said while it was "unclear" which state agency was responsible, a decision had nevertheless been made to "remove" it.
On its website, FFTRP said it had been difficult to "accurately account for all" of the "titles that have been made inaccessible, even if temporarily, in classroom libraries", but the group's list extended to more than 1,100 books.
US media outlets have reported other well-known books, including Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and a graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Attwood's classic Handmaid's Tale, as also making the banned list.
The ABC has contacted Duval County Public Schools for clarification on which titles have definitively been included in the ban.
Book 'completely appropriate', Fox insists
Guess What? tells the story of an old woman who is revealed to be a witch and who is, in one scene, depicted sitting "in an old laundry trough".
"It's completely appropriate," Fox told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"She's washing herself, she's sort of sitting in this sink, you can't see any of her private parts at all.
"The whole book is about guessing who this person is, it turns out to be a witch in the end."
Fox said she had been informed of the controversy over Guess What? by her literary agent in a message which "made me howl with laughter".
The author said that her agent had joked that she "might be able to increase sales if they got the five people who have bought the book [in Florida] in the last 10 years to sit in a room and chat about it'."
"As I said to her, did they scour the second-hand bookshops? I mean, is the book even in print? It's an ancient book, I can barely find it on my own shelves — it's hilarious," she said.
"You do have to feel awfully sorry for the Americans at the moment, you really do."
Fox herself recently condemned changes to Roald Dahl's books, in which passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race were edited for future publication.
"How dare they, how dare they change anything that he wrote?," she told the ABC at this year's Adelaide Writers' Week.
"He [Dahl] wrote those words and they are historically set at a certain time.
"It's ridiculous, the way we're carrying on."
