I almost forgot about Banned Books Week (I love that they used Captain Underpants on their graphic this year.)
Every year the American Library Association highlights the top 10 books that people tried to have removed from library shelves. (Yes, I know it should be called “Challenged Books Week.” Bite me.)
For a couple of years, Michele ran the Banned Books Project, where she had passionate essays on the evils of strangling intellectual freedom and thoughtful highlights of many of the books that find their way onto the Top 100 list. Then she got busy following the Red Sox around from city-to-city and hiding in the dugout and tying their shoelaces together when they weren’t looking, flashing her boobs at Night Ranger concerts, and giving Dan Rather his nightly enema. So, she turned the job over to me (the book thing, not the enema thing).
My version of the Banned Books Project was to list all 100 books and tell you why I would have banned them. From this, I have received links from a few dozen school libraries and a steady stream of “you book burning moron” e-mails. Life is good.
The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2003
- Alice series, for sexual content, using offensive language, and being unsuited to age group.
- Harry Potter series, for its focus on wizardry and magic.
- “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, for using offensive language.
- “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy.
- “Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers, for racism, sexual content, offensive language, drugs and violence.
- “Go Ask Alice” by Anonymous, for drugs.
- “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris, for homosexuality, nudity, sexual content and sex education.
- “We All Fall Down” by Robert Cormier, for offensive language and sexual content.
- “King and King” by Linda de Haan, for homosexuality.
- “Bridge to Terabithia” by Katherine Paterson, for offensive language and occult/satanism.
If you want to see top 100 list, you can either start at the Banned Books Project pages or see the original blog entries.
Challenged books.
This is my copy of Little Black Sambo. One of the top 100 most challenged books. I have read a lot of the books on the list and I urge you to read them as well. There are some…
Dang….I have some more reading to do….
I love how people with no sense of humor consistently fail to see the humor in anything those of us with senses of humor do. How terribly run-on was that?
Banned Books Week
It's Banned Books Week, something I nearly forgot about until I read his entry.
A book about gun culture challenged for inaccuracy? Astroturf from the NRA, huh?