Support your library, this week is Banned Book Week. The American Library Association has compiled a list of the most frequently challenged books of 1990 – 2001. See the list here, ..I find it mindboggling that there are still ongoing attempts to ban books and have them removed from libraries.
How many of these books have you read? Do you agree that they should be banned? I was amazed at some of the titles on the list, but here are the ones that I have read, and tomorrow I’m off to the library to read a new one…
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
77. Carrie by Stephen King
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
I think that I’m going to have to go look for Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz since it is (according to the ALA) the most challenged book (series) over the past decade. How fitting, a quick search of the Mesa Public library Catalog reveals that there are plenty of Schwartz scary stories available to read, and they are all in the juvenile sections.
It would be interesting to see if attempts to ban books might actually be on the increase…………
I used to be an English teacher. It never ceased to amaze me how much parents would complain about the books we’d read in class…classics, no less. A number of the books on your list were “issues” with some of my old parents. No wonder I didn’t last as a teacher…I couldn’t put up with the parents.
I am a retired English teacher who has taught several of the books on the list (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Ordinary People, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Great Gatsby, etc.). In thirty-one years, I never had one challenge from a parent, and only two challenges from students. In one case, the young woman read the book in spite of her step-father’s concerns. In the other case, a young woman explained that she did not mind the language of Catcher in the Rye “because that’s the way teenagers really talk.” However, she found the end of Grapes of Wrath objectionable since Rose of Sharon gives a dying man her breastmilk. Why that should be objectionable, I’m not quite sure.
I think many teachers get themselves into trouble because of the way they deal with these books. When, for example, we read about pre-marital sex in Ordinary People, I didn’t make a point of discussing it. My students (high-school juniors) knew what was going on, so why did we need to dwell on it?
In one case, a colleague assigned a controversial book that she had not read herself. When she was challenged, she had no basis on which she could argue.
I do hope that teachers will continue to teach the good books, regardless of their content, because these books frame life in ways other books can’t. No one, for example, can be dismissive of the connection between parenting and teenage suicide after reading Ordinary People.
Fight the good fight!
Jack Bonawitz