Banned Books Week 2020

As a librarian I am fortunate that, aside from 90 days right when I was graduating from Library School. I haven’t worked in a public library since. Public libraries and school libraries are the battle grounds for book banning. You can read my older posts on banned books to see what I did deal with in those 90 days. Let’s say it was enough to make me not want to work in a public library again!

The American Library Association, which is the group that represents public librarians in the United States. They do a tremendous about of good in providing all types of continuing education for librarians and library staff, developing programming, and supporting libraries on Capital Hill. They engage the best speakers for the annual conferences and have the biggest freebie haul of any library conference! They also track challenges to books (attempts to ban) across the nation and compile the lists of titles and the statistics that go with them.

The Top Ten Titles

As you can see, most relate to diverse sexuality. Here’s my thought on those: If you do not want you child reading it, then go to the library with them and advise them yourself on their selection. Another parent it the same PUBLIC library, whose taxes contributed as much as yours to the library budget, maybe grateful for such a book. Consider this: A young person tries out all types of persona as they go through adolescence. Maybe reading a book can help them clarify their thoughts and get on with life. Why object to that?

In school I do think we have gone too far into “relevance.” “Relevance for whom?” Also we’ve gone overboard with “at least they are reading.” I have no objection to any of the books here being in a school library. I do think there are other less controversial books that would be better for class assignment. That said, when I pulled both of my kids out of the study of one book each, I did not object to the class reading it, and it both cases it triggered their painful memories of their early past before we became a family. I had a valid reason that was affecting them, I spoke to the classroom teacher, then to the principal and the whole thing was arranged in 5 minutes. Both times my kids went next door for literature and read the book the other class was reading. End of it.

Most years I try to read a banned or challenged book. I choose from the ALA’s lists. Here is the list for the past decade 2010–2019  Consider this–the Bible is number 52 on the list of most challenged books. Here are links to a few of my reviews of banned/challenged books on this list. I did not read one this year, so these are older reviews.

Reflections on the Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

10 of My Family’s Favorite Banned/Challenged Books That Aren’t The Bible or Harry Potter

Some of My Reviews of Banned or Challenged Books

Looking for Alaska by John Green (scroll down the page to the review)

Year at a Glance

Do you have a favorite banned or challenged book? Did you/are you doing any Banned Book posts this week? Leave me a comment or a link to your post.

It’s Banned Books Week

This week is Banned Books Week in which the American Library Association brings attention to the issue of banned or challenged books in American school or public libraries. In every library, there is (or is supposed to be) a process for objecting to books and asking for a review of the book (or media these days). School libraries and public library children’s or young adults’ collections experience most of the challenges. Many, but by no means all, are from conservative religious groups or individuals holding such views.

A separate issue is the objection to books or media in the school curriculum. Books may be challenged on that basis, but without a request that the book be banned from the school library.  In most schools, it is a simple matter to request that your child be assigned a different book and sent elsewhere in the building during class time when the objectionable item is being used.

I did this with my kids when each had a book I could not approve assigned in elementary school. Neither was for religious reasons–both had to do with a situation similar to their former lives. “Triggered” was not yet an over-used buzz word back then, but that was the reason. I had immediate agreement from all involved and my kids did the same sort of project with a different book being read in a different classroom. After elementary school, I saw no reason to intervene.

Of these, Captain Underpants, to me, is merely tasteless, but then I’m not an 8 year old little boy. My son loved the first two books, but found the rest of them “stupid.” (He grew up!) I took Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo to be a picture book for grown-ups, so never found any reason for outrage. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a classic among banned and challenged book. It is still on my TBR–I generally try to read one banned/challenged book each year so maybe for 2020 I’ll finally get to it.

Links to my reviews of some of 2018’s most frequently banned/challenged books, found here.

Please click on the book’s title to go to my review.

The Librarian of Auchwitz

Looking for Alaska (scroll down for the review)

Beartown

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Here are some of my past Banned Book Weed posts

High School Banned Book Memory (2015)

Banned Books Week 2016

Three More Banned…Books I’ve Enjoyed (2016)

Banned Books Week 2017

A Few Banned Books I’ve Reviewed (2017)

Banned and Challenged Books Week: A Surprise Favorite (2017)

Ten of My Family’s Favorite Banned…aren’t Harry Potter or the Bible (2017)

Banned Books Week: A Few Banned Books I’ve Reviewed

Every year I try to bring awareness to Banned and Challenged Books during Banned Books Week. Here are a few of the books I’ve featured in past years–the linked text takes you to my own review. Within my review there will be a link to the Amazon listing for the book. I do not make any money off your clicks to Amazon. The links are just a convenience for you.

 

My Reviews or Reminiscences

 

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is in the same review with The Imortal Life of Henreitta Lacks and  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

Wrinkle in Time by Madelaine L’engle

A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Looking for Alaska by John Green

The Toritilla Curtian by T.C. Boyle is in the same review with The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Erhenreich

 

 

Banned Book Week: Ten of My Family’s Favorite Banned or Challenged Books That Aren’t Harry Potter or the Bible

 

No, I didn’t choose the Bible or Harry Potter. Nor TKAM. Nor GWTW. I tried to pick ones we enjoyed that aren’t Banned Book cliches. Did you know Where’s Waldo makes the list? It isn’t always the books you expect, is it? Well, here are our ten for today. These are by no means ALL of the banned or challenged books we’ve loved and enjoyed over the years. Just a nice selection of books you may not have known about.

 

Our Choices

(These are not in any ranked order.)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane [I know of one library in Idaho where this book was kept locked up].

Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatly Snider [a favorite of my daughter]

Junie B Jones series [another favorite of my daughter]

The Freedom Writer’s Diary (both my son and daughter)

The Outsiders (my son)

A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer

 

The Lists I Used-all official American Library Association lists

Banned and Challenged Classics

Top Ten Banned and Challenged Books Lists [all]

Frequently Challenged Children’s Books

 

Three More Banned or Challenged Books I’ve Enjoyed

This was a super fast read back in 2011, but what a VOICE Sandra Cisneros has!  Vignettes of a child’s view of immigrant poverty–one or two of which were simply too painful for me. You want to hug the girl telling the story and pick her up and whisk her out of there. This book is challenged for being inappropriate for the age group, but again, the girl in the story is young. She–and real children in our own country–are still enduring such things today.  This book has truly earned the label “classic.” The House on Mango Street.

 

 

I did not enjoy Hemingway in high school. But, many years after graduating, I listened to this book with my son who was then a high school freshman. I finally “got it” where Hemingway was concerned. I enjoyed this book quite a lot–both the story and the prose. I also enjoyed my son’s comments and our discussions. Later we watched the movie version as well. The descriptions of war are what often gets this book challenged. But to a generation who has seen Saving Private Ryan and worse, they are not a big deal. To me, who “feels” the prose as much as reads it, they still are. But they are magnificent in that awful way of war stories. The romance, too, I felt as much as read. A Farewell to Arms.

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating biography and science story all rolled into one. I know almost zip about science, but found myself sitting in the car listening to “just a little more” each day. A cell culture taken from a low-income African American woman turned out to be the golden-egg-laying-goose for science. That’s the simple part. The more intriguing part is the story of how Mrs. Lacks family dealt with this. Mrs. Lacks grew up in an isolated, impoverished area of Virginia that was kept cut-off from mainstream society by first slavery, then reconstruction and finally Jim Crow. Even in her current-day descendants there is a surreal innocence about science so much so that listening to it brought to mind not contemporary conversation, but a journal of Margaret Mead written on some forgotten island.

It’s the harsh reality of what was done (and is still done) to African Americans in this country that makes this story so riveting. The Lacks family has endured some of the worst treatment this country can dole out. Henrietta, her elder daughter and consequently her younger daughter have suffered in ways that no middle class white woman like myself can even comprehend. This story will continue to beckon to Book Clubs for generations. Every woman alive should read it and be grateful for the medical advances that came thru Henrietta and to atone for the ill-treatment this family has suffered.

This book was sadly misidentified as “pornography” by an under-educated woman who felt gynecology equaled pornography. Sad. Even sadder that it was a woman objecting–a woman who indirectly benefited from the research done with Henrietta Lack’s cells.

. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. (This review originally appeared on my old blog on February 28, 2012.)

 

Have you read any banned or challenged books this year? Not sure? Find out here on the American Library Associations Banned and Challenged Books Lists.

 

Which banned book would you give your younger self?

If I could go back and give my younger self a book, it would be Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. [Of course it wasn’t yet written when I was “young.”] I read this book right after Peace Corps. It would have been good to read this as a teenager to show just how that fabled other half lives.

Not many kids in suburban America in the 1970s knew about South Africa. Fewer still knew that in the late 20th century there were mothers who stood in line at the abattoir for a bucket of blood to boil to feed her starving children. That, had a big impact on me even AFTER living in Southern Africa. I cannot imagine how it would have rocked my world a decade earlier.

We would have understood the separation of the races known as Apartheid. The 1970s saw even more racial problems with court-ordered busing, so we would have at least had a little inkling of that. But eating boiled blood? No one would have known of that.

Sadly, this is one of the reason this book is challenged. Too graphic. That old “not appropriate for age group” label. What age group is it appropriate for? Little children are living that life still today. High School kids need lessons like this.

I’d also give myself his sequel, Kaffir Boy in America. Passing up a scholarship to Princeton because he lacked the sophistication to determine why one college was better than another was only the start of his problems. Sadly, the problems he experienced in this book are also still happening.

Which banned book would you give your younger self?

Awakening Edna: Lunch With a Banned Book Character

Recently, a blogger I follow, Book Club Mom, reviewed the Awakening by Kate Chopin–it was her choice for her summer reading challenge’s book with bad reviews. Her review of the book got me to remembering when I read it as a Freshman in college in a literature class on self-discovery. Later in college, I read many of the feminist classics in another class and understood some of the book better. That was 35 or so years ago–I’ve been thru a lot since then! I’ve been a wife and later I became a mother. I’m also a writer who is fascinated with older man, younger woman relationships. Therefore I’ve chosen Edna Pontellier, the main character who experiences the so-called ‘awakening’ as my lunch guest.

I’d want to interview her over lunch–like Jane Pauley or Barbara Walters would. I’d want to draw her out on why life with Leonce was so horrible.I’d want to know why she was so bored with everything. Was she completely unprepared for the [wink, wink] “ways” of marriage? Was Leonce a tyrannt? Why Robert? And what about Alcee? What did they have that Leonce lacked? Had she wanted children? If she’d not been expected to marry what would she have done?

Honestly? I don’t really care why she walked into the water. She struck me as too vapid too think of a better solution. But, then again, she could have been pregnant by her lover or could have contracted a social disease from him. At least that wouldn’t be boring. I thought she was a martyr to self-pity. I really think Edna was just not really interested in solving her own problems. But then, anti-depressants hadn’t been invented yet so that could be the very real reason for her lethargy and hopelessness. She probably had enough brains to leave morphine alone–or maybe Leonce forbid it in the house? Maybe over lunch she could tell her side and I’d finally feel some sympathy for her after all these years.

The Awakening has been called “morbid, vulgar, disagreeable, and scandalous” (source). It did not do well when published. In the 1960s it was rediscovered by the women’s movement as a model of the oppression of wives and mothers. It showed how Edna was stifled  and belittled by marriage and motherhood.

Objections to the book come mainly from those holding traditional views of marriage and motherhood. Women should always be there for their children and husband, no matter what. Edna dared to be different, but not really. What did she do? Had an affair? Lots of upper class women had affairs, but they didn’t kill themselves over it. See, I can’t come up with sympathy. I need to interview her. There has to be more to her story than just being married to an older man and being “burdened” with managing a houseful of servants.

In recent years it has been challenged for silly reasons–an exposed breast on the book’s cover and for supposedly for something a school board member read on the internet! Silly or not, these landed it on the list of most challenged classics. [I was hoping they’d want it banned for being dull].

I’m not recommending you go and read it. Trust me, The Sparks Notes version is more than adequate–probably even the Wikipedia entry will do. At least until my lunch with Edna is over….hmmmmmm…. maybe someone should find Edna’s long-lost diary and write the real story of her life and its true awakening. Not me though.

 

 

 

Who would you take out to lunch? Do you have a favorite banned book character? Leave me a comment.

 

 

Banned Book Week: Which book would I go to jail defending

While none of us can say with 100% certainty what we would do if our lives were immediately at risk, I hope and pray that I would go to prison to defend the Bible. Whether you believe it as literal truth, whether you are a person of faith by whatever term or whether you see it merely as a foundational cornerstone of the Western Canon, it is worth defending. At least to me it is. If my post on Dietrich Bonfhoeffer wasn’t enough of a clue then maybe you didn’t have time to read that post. You can read it now by clicking here.

I hope, if I were ever challenged, that I would stand up for my belief–stand up for this book. No other would truly be worth it. Not my favorite novels. Not the nonfiction I collect on Churchills and Roosevelts, not my Royal Family books. Only this one. It’s words sustain me. It’s story entertain and enthrall me. It’s message buoys me with hope in all circumstances. I have more of it memorized than of any other book. There is poetry, music, history, romance and much more within its covers.

You can argue back that it has caused more pain than any other. Certainly it has caused pain. It can be divisive. It can be used to manipulate, to harm or to cast others in bad light. All of that is true.

It’s believers were made to be imperfect so they are hypocritical, judgmental, greedy and other bad things Yes, that’s true. Yes, they ARE supposed to leave judgement to their God. They should never hold themselves up as examples–only God is the example. But God made them imperfect–just like every other person who has walked the Earth. Don’t judge a book based on that “one” believer you knew when. Don’t judge a book based on the popular media’s misrepresentation of its believers. “There is Nothing New Under the Sun,” this book says. It’s true. Everything old is new again–and everything is in here.

So, yes, I hope I would be strong enough to go to prison for this book. Maybe I’d be like Peter–maybe a gun to my head would get me to say “I don’t know Him.” Maybe. I hope not.

Photo Source

The Bible has appeared on nearly every list of banned or challenged books ever published. Some people claim it is the single most challenged book. Others claim its believers are the only people to challenge books (not true by any means). Every race, creed, color, political view, sexuality and probably even every profession has challenged some book, some where at some time–or so it seems. Yes, liberals do challenge books–conservative ones. And yes, conservatives do challenge books–liberal ones. But this book, the Bible remains not only one of the most challenged books, one of the most banned books, but also one of the most influential and best-selling books in human history. Everything else was written after, so to speak. No matter the translation, no matter the version, the Bible is, in my opinion, the single most important book in human history. Flame me if you like. It’s my blog, my opinion.

Before condemning it–read it. You can read the Bible for free in any number of versions online. I normally read the New International Version, but I love the Psalms in the King James Version. I learned various verses as a child in the American Standard Version. Here’s a great place to read the Bible and decide for yourself. Bible Gateway.

Banned Books Week Begins

Banned Books Week is a catchy title for a list of books challenged or out-right-banned by various schools and libraries. Books that some say don’t belong in school or public library collections. Last year I posted daily on various so-called banned books.  I hope you will join me in reviewing books that others have challenged–usually without reading them, but not always. I never mind when a parent objects for his or her own child, but to ask for it to  be made unavailable to all is another matter entirely. For the record, I asked twice in all my kids’ school years for them to be given a different book and to not be present when the offending book was discussed. Neither the teacher nor the district had a problem with that.

In a public library I watched as members of a church peacefully, civilly and at no cost to the community, kept borrowing, “losing” and paying the replacement free for a young person’s book on sex and sexuality. It consistently made the book unavailable which I did not feel was right, but they did it in a polite and no-cost manner so they were not stopped.

Today I’m linking to Banned and Challenged Books I’ve reviewed elsewhere on this blog during the past year or so. Click the linked title to view the previous post with my full review. To see all such books reviewed on this blog, click on the phrase Banned and Challenged Books in the tag cloud in the sidebar.

 

 

 

 

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle is a book on the expericoence of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America that aims to echo the Grapes of Wrath.

 

 

 

 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. An incredible coming-of-age story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for Alaska by John Green, another coming-of-age story, but one with a punch.

 

 

 

 

 

What do these books have in common? All are about outcasts of some sort. Even if they are outcasts only in their own minds. They are about differences from a perceived norm. They are also all brilliantly told stories. What’s more all have helped readers far more than they have supposedly hurt them.

All this week I will again be featuring banned and challenged books–and I hope you’ll do the same. Civil disobedience is fine, as long as it is civil. Civil disagreement is not very common any more. That’s tragic for it was long part of the strong fabric of this country.

If you are posting on Banned and Challenged Books this week, please leave a link in a comment. I’d love to read your post–whether it is pro banning or adamantly against! Civil disagreement still occurs in my world.

 

Banned and Challenged Book Week: The Current Top Ten Most Challenged Books

Source: Banned

1)      The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

Reasons: anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence. Additional reasons: “depictions of bullying”

2)      Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

Reasons: gambling, offensive language, political viewpoint. Additional reasons: “politically, racially, and socially offensive,” “graphic depictions”

3)      And Tango Makes Three, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Reasons: Anti-family, homosexuality, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “promotes the homosexual agenda”

4)      The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “contains controversial issues”

5)      It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris

Reasons: Nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group. Additional reasons: “alleges it child pornography”

6)      Saga, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Reasons: Anti-Family, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group. Additional reasons:

7)      The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited to age group, violence

8)      The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “date rape and masturbation”

9)      A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard

Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group

10)  Drama, by Raina Telgemeier

Reasons: sexually explicit

Explore the following pages for listings of banned/challenged books:

• 30 Years of Liberating Literature timeline
• Banned/Challenged Classics
• Top Ten Frequently Challenged Books lists
• 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books by Decade
• Most Frequently Challenged Authors pages of the 21st Century
• Extended list of books banned or challenged

The ALA condemns censorship and works to ensure free access to information. For more information on ALA’s efforts to raise awareness of censorship and promote the freedom to read, please explore Banned Books Week.

We do not claim comprehensiveness in recording challenges as research suggests that for each challenge reported there are as many as four or five that go unreported. In addition, OIF has only been collecting data about banned banned books since 1990, so we do not have any lists of frequently challenged books or authors before that date.