Banned Books Week

I'm celebrating Banned Books Week this week by having a giveaway on my blog - pop on over to check it out! All you need to do to win is leave a comment on that post along with your email address.

The Uprise Project is celebrating in a more meaningful way. It's building a web site that will be used to distribute banned and challenged books to impoverished teens across the country. But they need our help. Read more about their mission here.

It’s Banned Books Week – how will you celebrate?

From Sept. 25 through Oct 2, Banned Books Week highlights the importance of our freedoms. As an author, I’m grateful for the intellectual freedom we’re afforded in America. Across the nation, cities have joined in the fight against censorship by holding events.

Unfortunately, the practice of banning books follows a longstanding tradition of censorship. Read Mark Twain’s letter, written after the Omaha Public Library banned Huckleberry Finn

It’s surprising that even today, books are still being banned. One of my favorite authors, T.C. Boyle, made the list with The Tortilla Curtain. The Santa Rosa High School review committee limited its reading to juniors and seniors because they considered certain parts “provocative.”

This, when America ranks lower each year in global literacy? Seriously, how can students learn to think for themselves if others decide what they should and should not read?

Here are some accounts of attempts to ban books.

Four members of the Christian Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit seeking $30,000 each, claming emotional distress simply because the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library displayed a copy of Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop. They called for the YA book to actually be burned in public. Thank goodness for the library board’s decision, 9-0, not to restrict access in any manner.

After a parent claimed the book promited “economic fallacies” and socialist ideas, a Pennsylvania school district banned even such a benign title as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. A CYA move, disgraceful to say the least.


Here’s the complete list of books banned this past year.

These complaints makes me want to run out and read it for myself. Judge for myself. How about you?

How to combat this ongoing nonsense? The American Library Association advises us to be proactive. Stay informed. Several groups include activities designed to protect our First Amendment rights, including The Freedom to Read Foundation, The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, The National Coalition Against Censorship, The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Find them online, including Facebook, to keep yourself informed.



What should you do if you find an act of censorship? Report it to ALA’s Offi ce for Intellectual Freedom. All identifying information is kept strictly confidential. You can fi le reports online by going to www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/index.cfm.

Most importantly, participate in Banned Books Week by joining in a local event, or simply by reading a banned book. The New York Times suggests a list of ten activities, if you can’t think of one yourself.

Anna Quindlen also provided a few suggestions in her op ed piece.

What have I done, you ask? Why, I bought a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. I look forward to reading this classic, and to continue reading any book I choose.

Can You Judge a Book by Its Cover?

What do the Bible, Mein Kampf, Harry Potter, Lady Chatterly's Lover, Doctor Zhivago, Grapes of Wrath, and Alice in Wonderland have in common? Well, for starters, they've all become classics. But they also have another common link. At one time or another, someone sought to ban them.

Books are often banned for their contents, but how many have been banned for their covers? Seems that’s the problem author Bonnie J. Doerr is facing.

The cover in question is on Island Sting (Leap Books, January 2010). Doerr, a former Science teacher, planned her fast-paced eco-mystery series for classroom use. Each book in the series features a different endangered animal and is accompanied by lesson plans for use across the curriculum. Doerr, who won a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) grant for her first book to be used in environmental education, did in-depth, on-location research for each book, and many educators have praised the book’s content.

But will her new, edgy cover mean that rather than supplementing the science curriculum, the book will be banned by schools?

If some teachers have their way, it will.


The teachers’ objections? Bullet holes and blood. Some cited school shootings and violence as a reason for not wanting this book in the classroom.

No author wants a reputation for promoting violence. But what if the book in question is about violence? In this case, a poacher is killing the endangered Key deer. The background of the cover is designed to resemble the Caution: Endangered Animal Area signs found in Key West, Florida, the book’s location. The bullet holes suggest the danger as do the swerving tire tracks and fleeing deer tracks.

So the cover seems appropriate for the subject matter. And Leap Books queried teens about the cover and found it particularly attracted the interest of teens who indicated that they rarely read. Here's hoping teachers recant and select the book for its content. They might be pleasantly surprised to find reluctant readers snatching up the book. And isn't that every teacher's goal--to get students to read more?