Banned Book Week

[Eliza]

Banned Books Week, September 20–27 is observed each year in America since 1982, the annual event reminds us not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.

Each year, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom receives hundreds of reports on books and other materials that were "challenged" or asked to be removed from school or library shelves. The ALA estimates the number represents only about a quarter of the actual challenges.

Here is the link for The top 100 from 1990 to 2000. I was so surprised by some of the titles STILL being challenged and amazed at some of the titles I loved and grew up with as a child are on this list and being challeged now. Just food for thought....

Top 100 Challenged Books (http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Association/Offices/Intellectual_Freedom3/Banned_Books_Week/Related_Links7/100_Most_Frequently_Challenged_Books_of_1990-2000.htm)


~Eliza

[Lilith]

Well it's funny but I am glad that books cause controversy. The best books make you take stock, examining how you feel, and that's exactly what many of the books on that list cause the reader to do.

Not only have I read many on that list but so have my children, as well as my students. I will continue to expose them to challenging literature that allows them the freedom to explore their feelings and opinions safely.

[Cheyanne]

John Steinbeck
Maya Angelou
Mark Twain
James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
J.D. Salinger
Jean M. Auel
Toni Morrison
Judy Blume

These were the authors that most suprised me.....

What is sad about this is that these works are fiction, and are based on an era of American History and what society was like....and to ban or censor them from anyone is wrong. I believe that it is the choice of the individual to read these or not. I believe that no other person but myself should have a say in what is available for my children or myself to read.

And..........as far as the Harry Potter series.... bah!!!! It is a world of make-believe!!! If the people who want to ban these books feel as if they are protecting me and mine, they are wrong!!! If they don't want to read them for fear these books will turn them into satanists... ((LMAO)) then that is their choice.... (I bet they read the National Enquirer - space aliens will abduct you if....)

[Steph]

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is banned?
Blubber?

I'm surprised by a lot of those choices, too.

[BigBear57]

I guess the optomist in me sees the possibility of good coming from this. You know the forbidden fruit effect just may cause someone who wouldn't ordinarily have sought to read some of these titles go to a public book store and do just that. I know personally I buy my kids books I loved as a child and haven't bothered to see if any literary experts have deemed it offensive. Sometime you just have to take these things with a grain of salt and laugh at them. Mark Twain for crying out loud. Just makes me shake my head.

[GingerV]

I am well familiar with this list, I buy appropriately aged Christmas gifts off it all the time. And when I'm in a particularly persnickity mood, I buy any copies I might find at garage sales and in bargain bins...and donate them to the local schools. Doesn't fix anything, but I hope that someday it will give one of them an opportunity to re-examine a decision they might have made. And it's a reward if they haven't banned them.

We can't change history by ignoring it, or the artistic products of an age. We can't learn from history if we leave it unexamined. Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird may use words or social structures that we rightfully abhorent now, but they were also part of what changed that time. Read within their appropriate social context, they can advance our understanding. For myself, it was only in reading about that era I learned things that my sheltered, liberal upbringing could not have taught me. At the very least, in reading them we can celebrate what has changed. The very fact that Twain now has the power to discomfort people tells us something good about ourselves.

And the same goes for books that have been banned because they tell us uncomfortable things about ourselves today. I have never understood how anyone feels that we can be protected by ignorance. And banning Harry Potter is like trying to ban imagination. Show me someone who thinks they're accompllishing anything by keeping their kids from reading about magic...and I'll bet you dollars to dust bunnies, their kids STILL play "lets pretend we have magic powers." Magical thinking is just a stage kids go through, it's a natural expression of their frustration with their reletive powerlessnenss in the world. They don't need to have it shown to them...they come up with it on their own.

Anyway, I always thought that the most important poliltical post is school board member, in a lot of ways. This sort of nonsense is why.

[LixyChick]

I absolutely adore that GingerV used the word "persnickity"! It's one of my favorite words in the English language.....but I rarely hear it or see it used anymore! ^5 Ginger! LOL!

TY for this Eliza......I agree with everything said above! Books are a passion....not only for me, but for most people I know. And this list has some rather shocking inclusions! As a matter of fact....I've got to get to the library and pick up of a copy of Sex by Madonna.....as I've never laid eyes on it and since someone banned it...it makes it all the more intriguing to me!

*thinking.....hmmmmm....this is only my second or third post this morning and I've already used Madonna's name twice.....wondering what that could mean!!..lol!*

[PantyFanatic]

GingerV summarizes it all for me.

I have never understood how anyone feels that we can be protected by ignorance.

[skipthisone]

I have read 61 of the books on the list....and the other 39 are now on my to do...

Knowledge is power.....

[Eliza]

Originally posted by skipthisone
I have read 61 of the books on the list....and the other 39 are now on my to do...

Knowledge is power.....

Couldn't have said it better Skip. :D
~ELiza

[Teddy Bear]

I never knew there was a banned book list until my oldest was looking into colleges to attend. We went to an open house at U. of Maine and took the tour. In the student book store they had a table set up with a display of maybe 12 banned books for sale. It was 4 years ago, I forget now how many or what titles were there. But I do remember my daughter and I had read most of them & thought they were great books. We ended up buying 2 of them that we hadn't yet read.

I was happy to know that not all places are closed minded. It was great that this school thought it's student body should be free to read the books it wanted to. As far as elementary school aged children, I think it's up to the parent to monitor what they read.

But books should never be banned!! What happened to freedom of speech? And freedom of the press? Our constitutional forefathers must be rolling over in thier graves....

[babybunny]

Wow! Alot of these I have read and love to pieces! Still more to read I guess... :devil:

[lakritze]

I am surprised at the one omittion from this list.It says more about those who would ban books than just about any other book on the list..It's the Diary of Ann Frank.