Welcome to Banned Books Week, a week every year in which we collectively ban books… wait, no! We read them, the books others have so thoughtfully (?) moved to ban! We are celebrating our right to read challenged and/or banned books.
Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of ‘The Giver’: the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.~Lois Lowry
According to the American Library Association (ALA) these are 2012 top 10 most frequently challenged books:
1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey.
Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.
Reasons: Offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
3. Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher.
Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James.
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
5. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.
Reasons: Homosexuality, unsuited for age group
6. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.
Reasons: Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green.
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
8. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: Unsuited for age group, violence
9. The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
10. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Reasons: Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence
Notice that there are books that are challenged with unsurprising frequency, this pdf has a lovely list of such books and the explanations behind their challenges.
The American Library Association provides many a more list and statistic, as does Banned Books Week.
I am not sure which, if any, challenged/banned book I will (re)read this year (with my horrendous course load at school). Although I did just finish that quite naughty uncensored version of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.
I hope you will find time to celebrate with a “scandalous” read. Any plans that direction?
leslie d. 