Thursday, October 1, 2009

Banned Books Week

It is banned books week. While I think the freedom to read is always important, I like Banned Books Week because it shines the spotlight on the issue. I encourage everyone to read a banned book this week; there are no shortages of titles to choose from!

Have a look at the "Frequently Challenged Books" page at the American Library Association website; by clicking about in the sidebar, you can see banned and challenged books by year, author, books by authors of color, by decade, and classics on the list.

11 Banned Books I have Read and Was Surprised to Find They've Been Censored (in no particular order):

  1. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
  2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
  3. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
  4. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
  5. Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
  6. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  8. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
  9. James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
  10. Where’s Waldo?, by Martin Hanford
  11. Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Check out the Banned Books Challenge for reviews of banned books and some smart discussion about book censorship.

4 comments:

Bavardess said...

Gah!! The banning of books is an activity guaranteed to get me frothing at the mouth. I can't believe how many of the 100 classics have been challenged/banned at some point! Or maybe I should be more surprised that some nutjob hasn't found *something* to object to in Winnie the Pooh...

Ink said...

Banning makes me froth, too. Harrumph.

Archaeogoddess said...

Seriously? "Where's Waldo?"??!!??

I once decided to read the entire list from one end to the other. BUT THEY KEEP ADDING TO IT!!

My mom is a librarian, and this is her greatest frustration. Well, that and people who deface books. She'll getting fighting mad if you try to ban a book, but go into her library and cut out the offending page from a book she refused to ban? Oh, she'll hunt you down and kill you. Or would except I didn't become a CSI and so I can't trace the perp and then cover her tracks after the murder spree.

Digger said...

Thanks for your comments, all! And thanks for stopping by, Archaeogoddess.

According to the Banned Books Challenge blog at http://bannedbookschallenge.blogspot.com/2009/09/wheres-waldo-too-racy-for-library.html the issue with Where's Waldo is that "... on the beach page of the original Where's Waldo? book, there is a topless woman lying face down on a beach towel, one extremely tiny illustrated breast partially exposed amidst thousands of other illustrated beach goers." Banning a whole book because of a partial glimpse of very tiny boob seems... excessive. And makes me think there are lots of people with too much time on their hands (I wonder if they ever found Waldo?)

Bavardess, re: Winnie the Pooh, from author Anna Quindlen via the same blog post cited above, "Winnie the Pooh does not wear pants. Just a warning."