Once again, Banned Books Week is here, and once again I have exactly 0 plans for blogging. In 2015, I made a blog for every day of banned books week. Last year, I had way too much on my plate, and this year... well, I got married a week and half ago, and that's an excuse I'm gonna milk for at least another month ; )
Seriously, though, Banned Books week really crept up on me this year. It's the first year since I've had this blog that I haven't also worked in a library. If you work in a library or school, you're working on BBW in, like, July, so there's no way it's gonna surprise you.
So, in interest of doing SOMETHING, I'm going to fall back on what I did last year, which is repost my daily blogs from BBW 2015. Yeah, kind of a cop out, but at least this year it's a different website, so it actually kind of serves a little bit more of a purpose to get the information and opinions back out there on the web.
So, without further ado, I give you...
Banned Books Week - Day 1
So today is the opening day of Banned Books Week, and I think I'll open with a little background.
For those of you who may not know, Banned Books Week is a national observation headed by the American Library Association in which libraries celebrate banned and challenged books. "What's a banned book?" you might ask. "What's the difference between a banned and challenged book? Who's banning these books, anyway?" Good questions.
A book is considered "challenged" when someone files a complaint that they hope will result in making the book available to fewer people. This can range anywhere from asking a library or school to move the book to a different section so that children under a certain age can't access it, to completely removing it from a library's collection. When someone succeeds in removing a book from a school or library, or prevents it from being sold in a certain area, that book is considered banned.
"Oh, no, that's awful!" you might say. "Who is doing this?" The answer is - you. Or me. Or anybody. Any time anyone attempts to prevent someone from accessing a book, that's part of what is going on. Now, there's a difference between, say, giving your 7-year-old a book with explicit sex and violence and trying to prevent ANYONE from reading said explicit book. The latter is what we're really talking about here. (And the former is a topic for a different blog post.)*
So to kick off Banned Books Week, I offer up a list of books I have read that can be found on the various banned and challenged lists on the ALA website. If you are up for sharing, please type the titles you've read in the comments. No comments along the lines of "You read that book? You have no soul!" You might look at my list and say, "Ugh, your reading choice is terrible," as long as you agree that I have a right to my terrible reading choice. This week is not about whether or not a book is well-written, offensive, or both, and neither is this post. This is meant to show how much these "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" books people are actually reading. (And yes, you can count it even if your English teacher made you read it.)
Banned and challenged books I have read (In no particular order):
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Beloved by Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Twilight Series (all 4) by Stephenie Meyer
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Uncle Bobby's Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Harry Potter Series (all 7) by J. K. Rowling
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
The Giver by Lois Lowry
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) (Well... I still haven't finished the 3rd one. All that spanking gets really old after a while...)
Carrie by Stephen King
The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Lord of the Rings (all 3 ) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Bible (no I haven't read the whole thing)
And probably more - I'm sure there are regional lists, books that caused a stir at your high school, or books and authors that were removed quietly enough from a library or school here or there that no one noticed.
For more information, lists, statistics and all kinds of fun things, you can check out the ALA's banned books pages: http://www.ala.org/bbooks/
One of the things you can find on the ALA website is a graph of who is challenging books by group - parents make up the largest percentage by far.
Come back each day this week - I'm challenging myself to blog about a book or series from this list all week long.