Did you know that this week is Banned Books Week? It's a week that has been set aside for the last 30 years to promote reading. To stand up against those who would make our choices for us. It is for those who choose to proudly say I READ..
I grew up in a house where books were plentiful.. where more often than not when we were at sporting events, if you wanted to find my mom, you looked over to the nearest set of trees and there my mom would be in her chair, reading a book. Not watching the game, reading a book. The thought of not having a book on me at all times is inconceivable.
My mom always said, it didn't matter if your child would only read comic books, at least he is reading. Of course that didn't pertain to her children we read classics.. *rolls eyes* She still hasn't forgiven me for my love of romance books.. but that is another story. I do know, more often than not if she had heard that a book was banned and she felt it was age appropriate, we had to read it. I tried to raise my children in a similar manner. I can say with great pride, all four read.. they have unique and interesting tastes but read they do.
Sadly, not all people are afforded that right.. schools, governments, churches all for one reason or another choose to challenge or ban a book.. How can that possible be right? Sure some books are graphic, some books are extreme, some books are *gasp* bad.. but it is not the right of State to make that choice for us. Parents need to guide their children, encourage them to read and question what they are reading.. to make their own choices...in short to LEARN..
I found this list on Rebecca Ryals Russell's Website and thought it needed to be shared..
SOME of the 2011 challenged or banned books were:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Flamingo Rising, by Larry Baker
The Notebook Girls: Four Friends, One Diary, Real Life, by Baskin, Newman, Pollitt-Cohen, Toombs
Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs
My Mom’s Having a Baby, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Betrayed, by P.C. and Kristin Cast
Staying Far for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
In 2010 the top 10 most frequently challenged books were:
1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
6. Lush, by Natasha Friend
7. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
But it’s not just contemporary books that get banned, classics get banned and challenged, too.
*The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. *The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. *The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. *To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. *The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. *1984 by George Orwell (This one is the most ironic as its theme is suppression of books and thoughts)
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. *Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. *Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. *Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. *Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. *Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. *Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. *Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. *The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. *The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. *The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. *Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. *The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. *Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. *A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. *Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. *A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. *The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. *Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. *Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
To read the entire article click HERE
You want to support banned books, share what books you have read that have been banned.. shout it loud and proud!!
Shauni
