Hello, readers! Welcome to Banned Books Week 2018. I will be posting a blog every day this week, some of them about specific books and some about broader topics.
For today, I wanted to give a little background on Banned Books Week. The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom keeps track of books that are reported as banned or challenged. These challenges can include reasons such as language, sexuality, age-inapropriateness, or religious reasons. These challenges can range from a concerned parent or citizen asking that the book be made less accessible to certain age groups, to a book being successfully removed from a school curriculum or library. Every year, the ALA releases a list of the top 10 challenged books reported in the previous year.
Obviously, the list changes every year, but there are some books that you might call "frequent offenders" that appear on the list for several years in a row, or even return to the list after a period of time. The big granddaddy of these is To Kill a Mockingbird, which appears on the 2017 Top 10 Challenged Books list a whopping 54 years after its publication.
For the rest of 2017's list, and other info on this important observation, check here: https://bannedbooksweek.org/about/
Stop back by tomorrow, when I will begin delving into more specifics as to banned books or authors, and the reasons why they have been challenged.