Happy Banned Book Week, Persephoneers!
I always loved this week when I was a teen because Barnes & Noble would set up a table of frequently banned books and I’d go eagerly browse them in hopes of finding something controversial to read. The ALA has a ton of cool info about Banned Books Week, including lists of the most commonly banned classics, a year-by-year breakdown of what’s been challenged/banned recently, and more. My to-read list just got bigger, and I even found a few books I need to get the kiddo (some people really don’t like gay penguins!).
What’s your favorite banned book? I’m awfully partial to the Harry Potter books, of course, and To Kill a Mockingbird and Gone With the Wind are both amazing.
8 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Banned Book Week”
I loooooove the Chocolate War. And Summer of My German Soldier, of course!!! And I usually read Fahrenheit 451 every year during Banned Books Week, but this week has been just nonstop so far.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is one of the best books I’ve read. Ever. I can absolutely see why it’s challenged, and perhaps it should be, because depending on the teen, it isn’t always age-appropriate. However, it’s spectacular.
Captain Underpants has been challenged? Wow. Sad. Those books are hilarious. Julie of the Wolves? I don’t even understand how that could be a problem. Apparently people are way more uptight about books than I’d realized.
Ok, so I’m reading the list and I get to Summer of My German Soldier and in the reasons it lists racism as one of them. Really. Racism in a book about a Jewish girl feeling alienated in the deep south in the 40s. In a book that deals with Nazis. Really. I don’t even. The best I can figure is that there is some point of order about the fact that the town’s people call the Chinese man who owns the grocery store a racist slur. They also destroy his shop. It’s not like she doesn’t show it as a negative.
And I only just got around to reading Perks of Being a Wallflower but I liked it a lot.
ETA: Classics I love are Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and Brave New World.
Out of those top tens, definitely His Dark Materials and The Color Purple. Classics: Catch-22 and Lord of the Rings. If Ulysses is banned for something, it should be for being really, really hard to read.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels are also on the list, I think, and I’ve read the hell out of those.
The Loraxis probably my favorite “banned for ridiculous reasons” book. I think the reasoning was that it defamed the foresting industry.
I do my best to read banned/challenged books, if for no other reason but to be able to respond to “IT TEACHES EVILZ” with “well, *actually*, this book is about…” and sound really smart and stuff.
Of course, I’m just re-reading “The Stand” for the billiontieth time right now. But Stephen King’s a challenged author since he writes horror books and doesn’t portray all religious people as Perfect, so it counts, right?
Hey, this is cool! I was told by my principal in 2011 that I should not teach Brave New World anymore, and it’s in the top ten for that year! I’m a trend!
Not actually cool…
I’m currently reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, which was banned in multiple countries around the world and frequently censored by omission in the US.