Banned Books Week- Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Sep 29

Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association

During the week of September 27th to October 3rd, the American Library Association (ALA) is celebrating the freedom to read by sharing information about banned & challenged books. Both banned and challenged books were attempts made by a person or a group to remove materials from an academic curriculum, or an institution like the library to restrict others from accessing said books. Books are constantly being challenge daily and you can find more information (and an extended list) of banned/challenged books on the ALA website.

For my reading challenge I still need to read a banned book and conveniently, I found a flyer while browsing at Barnes on the Top 100 Banned/Challenges Books. As I'm going through it, I'm surprised by the books that made the list many of which I read as a high school student. I will be using this list to find to fulfill my reading challenge but just from the first 10 books in the list I've read half of them which are:

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (#1)
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (#3)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (#5)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (#6)
The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (#10)

The list goes on and I see a lot of familiar titles, some I've read, browsed or are on my never-ending TBR list. I'm not surprised to see Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and The Giver in the list (I obviously disagree with the reasons in which they were banned/challenged) but I am surprised that The Lorax, Charlotte's Web & Little Women were at one point banned/challenged. And furthermore apparently a lot of Dr. Seuss' titles were banned/challenged.

The ALA has the most up to date list of books that were banned/challenge between 2014-2015 which lists 33 titles and includes: The Twilight Series, 3 of John Green Books, and If I Ran a Zoo + Hop n' Pop by Dr. Seuss.

As an avid reader I really don't know how to digest some of the reasoning behind some of these ban and challenges. I understand putting an age limit to some explicit materials just like access to film/video games but to completely remove it from the library so others can't access it is just taking it a bit far.

I hope that fellow book lovers would take part in the Banned Books Week by sharing the links to the ALA website. I will end with a quote that I think is appropriate for this week:

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so, too." Voltaire

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,