Books, Then, Are A Light That Can Dispel the Darkness Of Ignorance

Actually, Some Folks Use the Banned Books List As a Recommended Reading List

I'll Just Leave This Here.

{Source}

Remember, Banned Books Not Only Come In All Shapes and Sizes, but Formats as well.

What's the last Banned Book you listened to?

{BANNED & CHALLENGED BOOKS}

Every year At This Time I Hear That Book Banning Is A Thing Of the Past . . .

The Top 10 Books that Americans tried to ban last year {LINKYPOO}



What I get from all these book  challenges is that learning about the real life issues and events that confront children and families is dangerous, and everyone should be kept as ignorant as possible.

For their own good, of course.

Sure. That makes sense.

Banned Book Week Makes its Way Around Once Again.

American Library Association Dot Org

Every Year Someone Comments that Books Are No Longer Banned, So This Week is A Lot of nonsense For Nothing.

In anticipation, this year I'll just link to a couple samples of current goings on:

School Board Cancels Summer Reading List Rather Than Include LGBT Themed Novel

Church leader pushing petition to ban certain books at Austin Memorial 

Highland Park ISD suspends seven books after parents protest their content

Dallas High School Bans Books, the Problem with Sentimentality, and More

Texas school district bans John Green, 6 other authors

Banned Books Have Helped Shape This Country!

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965 (Grove Press)

Objectors have called this seminal work a “how-to-manual” for crime and decried because of “anti-white statements” present in the book. The book presents the life story of Malcolm Little, also known as Malcolm X, who was a human rights activist and who has been called one of the most influential Americans in recent history.

Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987

Again and again, this Pulitzer-prize winning novel by perhaps the most influential African-American writer of all time is assigned to high school English students. And again and again, parental complaints are lodged against the book because of its violence, sexual content and discussion of bestiality.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, 1970

Subtitled “An Indian History of the American West,” this book tells the history of United States growth and expansion into the West from the point of view of Native Americans. This book was banned by a school district official in Wisconsin in 1974 because the book might be polemical and they wanted to avoid controversy at all costs. “If there’s a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it,” the official stated.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

Rather than ban the book about book-banning outright, Venado Middle school in Irvine, CA utilized an expurgated version of the text in which all the “hells” and “damns” were blacked out. Other complaints have said the book went against objectors religious beliefs. The book’s author, Ray Bradbury, died this year.

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936

The Pulitzer-prize winning novel (which three years after its publication became an Academy-Award Winning film) follows the life of the spoiled daughter of a southern plantation owner just before and then after the fall of the Confederacy and decline of the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. Critically praised for its thought-provoking and realistic depiction of ante- and postbellum life in the South, it has also been banned for more or less the same reasons. Its realism has come under fire, specifically its realistic portrayal – though at times perhaps tending toward optimistic -- of slavery and use of the words “nigger” and “darkies.”

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939

Kern County, California has the great honor both of being the setting of Steinbeck’s novel and being the first place where it was banned (1939). Objections to profanity—especially goddamn and the like—and sexual references continued from then into the 1990s. It is a work with international banning appeal: the book was barred in Ireland in the 50s and a group of booksellers in Turkey were taken to court for “spreading propaganda” in 1973.

Howl, Allen Ginsberg, 1956

Following in the footsteps of other “Shaping America” book Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg’s boundary-pushing poetic works were challenged because of descriptions of homosexual acts.

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952

Ellison’s book won the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction because it expertly dealt with issues of black nationalism, Marxism and identity in the twentieth century. Considered to be too expert in its ruminations for some high schools, the book was banned from high school reading lists and schools in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington state.

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906

For decades, American students have studied muckraking and yellow journalism in social studies lessons about the industrial revolution, with The Jungle headlining the unit. And yet, the dangerous and purportedly socialist views expressed in the book and Sinclair’s Oil led to its being banned in Yugoslavia, East Germany, South Korea and Boston.

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855

If they don’t understand you, sometimes they ban you. This was the case when the great American poem Leaves of Grass was first published and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice found the sensuality of the text disturbing. Caving to pressure, booksellers in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania conceded to advising their patrons not to buy the “filthy” book.

Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940

Richard Wright’s landmark work of literary naturalism follows the life of young Bigger Thomas, a poor Black man living on the South Side of Chicago. Bigger is faced with numerous awkward and frustrating situations when he begins working for a rich white family as their chauffer. After he unintentionally kills a member of the family, he flees but is eventually caught, tried and sentenced to death. The book has been challenged or removed in at least eight different states because of objections to “violent and sexually graphic” content.

Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1971

Challenges of this book about the female anatomy and sexuality ran from the book’s publication into the mid-1980s. One Public Library lodged it “promotes homosexuality and perversion.” Not surprising in a country where some legislators want to keep others from saying the word “vagina.”

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

The book was actually retained after a 2003 challenge in Mercedes, TX to the book’s adult themes. However, parents were subsequently given more control over what their child was assigned to read in class, a common school board response to a challenge.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

Parents of students in Advanced English classes in a Virginia high school objected to language and sexual content in this book, which made TIME magazine’s list of top 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963

Sendak’s work is beloved by children in the generations since its publication and has captured the collective imagination. Many parents and librarians, however, did much hand-wringing over the dark and disturbing nature of the story. They also wrung their hands over the baby’s penis drawn in In the Night Kitchen.

The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002

The works of Chavez were among the many books banned in the dissolution of the Mexican-American Studies Program in Tucson, Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District disbanded the program so as to accord with a piece of legislation which outlawed Ethnic Studies classes in the state. To read more about this egregious case of censorship, click here. 

{Banned Books that have Shaped America}

(complete list)

Quote of the Day

Choices Abound!

You've Entered A Banned Book Friendly Zone! [UPDATED]

This is a pet peeve of mine:
Talking about an evil does not constitute an endorsement of it.

Here are a few cases in point, from Banned Books That Have Shaped America. While painting skillful portraits of the evils of slavery and racism, these books have been accused of promoting the very wrongs they seek to demonize. Their scathing social commentary is effectively subsumed beneath false, or misplaced, outrage, and the debate becomes about, not substance, but style. The actual message of the book is lost, along with meaningful dialog.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884

The first ban of Mark Twain’s American classic in Concord, MA in 1885 called it “trash and suitable only for the slums.” Objections to the book have evolved, but only marginally. Twain’s book is one of the most-challenged of all time and is frequently challenged even today because of its frequent use of the word “nigger.” Otherwise it is alleged the book is “racially insensitive,” “oppressive,” and “perpetuates racism.”

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960

Harper Lee’s great American tome stands as proof positive that the censorious impulse is alive and well in our country, even today. For some educators, the Pulitzer-prize winning book is one of the greatest texts teens can study in an American literature class. Others have called it a degrading, profane and racist work that “promotes white supremacy.”

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

Like Huck Finn, Of Mice and Men and Gone With the Wind, the contextual, historically and culturally accurate depiction of the treatment of Black slaves in the United States has rankled would-be censors.

[UPDATE: I thought this quote was eminently applicable.]

{ALA's Frequently Challenged Books}

Don't Let the End of Banned Books Week Put a Stop to Your Exploration of New Thoughts and Ideas . . .

For What It's Worth, Many Graphic Novels Have Also Been Banned or Challenged.

Carnegie Library 

(Banned Graphic Novels)

So Many Books, So Little Time . . .

Which Banned Books Have You Read?

Banned Books to Read! Yay! (listed by year)

Want to read to your kids? Here are some banned Picture Books; banned Chapter Books; and banned Young Adult Books.



Visit:

The

American Library Association

for information on which books have been challenged and/or banned.

(as well as how you can add your voice to the chorus against censorship, or the steps to take if you find yourself up against a challenge)

A Poem from a Powerful Advocate for the Right to Read . . .

Manifesto
- Ellen Hopkins

To you zealots and bigots and false
patriots who live in fear of discourse.
You screamers and banners and burners
who would force books
off shelves in your brand name
of greater good.

You say you're afraid for children,
innocents ripe for corruption

by perversion or sorcery on the page.
But sticks and stones do break
bones, and ignorance is no armor.
You do not speak for me,
and will not deny my kids magic
in favor of miracles.

You say you're afraid for America,
the red, white, and blue corroded
by terrorists, socialists, the sexually
confused. But we are a vast quilt
of patchwork cultures and multi-gendered
identities. You cannot speak for those
whose ancestors braved
different seas.

You say you're afraid for God,
the living word eroded by Muhammed
and Darwin and Magdalene.
But the omnipotent sculptor of heaven
and earth designed intelligence.
Surely you dare not speak
for the father, who opens
his arms to all.

A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear. 

{Ellen Hopkins Bibliography}

{Photo Source}

My Vote for Most Ironically Challenged Book EVER -

Fahrenheit 451!

Hey! Look! Facebook!

Let's see what's being challenged so far, this year.
(link for more information: HERE)

Fallen Angels Walter Dean Myers * A Child Called It Dave Pelzer * Persepolis Marjane Satrapi * Muslim Women and the Challenges of Islamic Extremism Norani Othman, ed. * Intensely Alice Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

It's That Time Again - Celebrate the Right to Read!

Sources to help artists protect their rights: public access, free expression, fair use . . . HERE.

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship. Check out the frequently challenged books section to explore the issues and controversies around book challenges and book banning. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read.

- American Library Association.

For more information or to find out how you can get involved, go to ala.org.

For More Information on Censorship and Book Banning

A great compilation of sites

BANNED BOOKS WEEK . . . BANNED BOOKS WEEK . . . BANNED BOOKS WEEK

Do you?