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September 2013
 

Banned Books Week is the national book community's annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The 2013 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 22-28. 

Banned Books Virtual "Read-Out"​​

As part of this annual awareness campaign that draws attention to censorship ALA (American Library Association) has partnered with fellow cosponsors of Banned Books Week to host a virtual "Read-Out" where readers from around the world will be able to participate!

Banned Books - Celebrate the Freedom to Read: A Timeline

​​This timeline (created by the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2012) celebrates the Banned Books Week, the national book community’s celebration of the freedom to read. This timeline shares a collection of significant banned and challenged books. For each year from 1982 to 2012, this timeline highlights one book banned or challenged in that particular year. In most cases, these books faced significant controversy that spanned numerous years. The timeline presents only a sample of particularly notable challenges to particularly notable books during this period. All information sourced from the 2010 Banned Books Week resource guide, Banned Books: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read, edited by Robert P. Doyle (ALA, 2010); the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom; and additional content supplied by Angela Maycock, Assistant Director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read​​

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982. For more information on Banned Books Week, click here. According to the American Library Association, there were 464 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2012, and many more go unreported. The 10 most challenged titles of 2012 were:

 

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

BANNED BOOKS WEEK 2013

Banned Books Week 2012 timeline
Student Runs Secret Banned Books Library from Locker

​​A Catholic school student who identifies herself by the avatar name “Nekochan” started an unofficial library of banned books that she runs out of her locker at school. She began to lend books to her classmates when her school banned a long list of classic titles, including The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost and Animal Farm.

 

Concerned about getting in trouble for violating school rules, Nekochan wrote a letter to an online advice column to ask if it was “ok to run an illegal library” from her locker.

Books are still being banned or challenged in today’s society. Just last week, a North Carolina County School Board voted 5-2 to ban Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” stating that they found “no literary value” in the work and that it was “too much for teenagers.” “Invisible Man” is one of the most famous pieces of literature about Black life in America in the 1950s and won the National Book Award, so the school board’s assertion that it had no literary merit is, at the very least, questionable. It is also the number one most cited book on the College Board’s Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam.

 

 

Just a few days before North Carolina’s decision, in Arizona, “Dreaming in Cuban,” Cristina Garcia’s critically acclaimed book about politics and family after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, was banned. The American Library Association says that the book has never been banned before, even though the parent who challenged the book cited sexually explicit material. Considering Arizona’s long history of banning books and stripping courses having to do with Latino/a culture, this decision is questionable as well.

Banned Books - Awareness

 

Throughout history, some of the most culturally important books have been banned, drawing attention to the important issues they present and, ironically, making them more enticing, especially to young readers.

Nekochan wrote about the recent book ban: “I was absolutely appalled, because a huge number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well… I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list.”

 

Read more from the September 2, 2011 Care2.com article.

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