Hi. My name is dSavannah, and I read banned books.
And I’m helping celebrate / promote (demote?) / raise awareness for Banned Books Week, which was created in 1982 by the American Library Association (ALA), which reports that more than 11,300 books have been challenged since that time.
Last year, in 2014, 311 challenges were reported to the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. (Note: not all challenges get reported to them. I shudder to think how many more there might be if all challenged books got reported.)
Okay, so why are books being banned and/or challenged? This handy graphic from the American Library Association shows the top reasons:
Note that the top reasons are “offensive language” and “sexually explicit”. (If our kids can’t learn bad language or about sex from books, they’ll turn to television!)
And here are the people challenging the books (graphic also from the ALA):
Um, am I the only one who sees a disturbing trend there? The most challenges come from PARENTS. Not religious organizations or clergy, like you might think, but from parents. Uh, if you don’t want your kid to read a book, you tell them not to. They will anyway, and then literature wins!
Also from the ALA, here’s a list of the top 10 challenged books for 2014:
By the way, Sherman Alexie’s excellent book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, has been on the list pretty much every year since it’s been published. Makes me think maybe it’s got a very very important message.
Other much-loved authors on the challenged list include Aldous Huxley, Harper Lee, Eric Jerome Dickey, Judy Blume, John Steinbeck, Philip Pullman, Robert Cormier, J. D. Salinger, Lois Lowry, Maurice Sendak, Stephen King, Louise Rennison, J.K. Rowling, Maya Angelou, and Roald Dahl.
Do any of these names shock you? Surprise you? Make you mad? They should. Because we live in a society where people have the CHOICE to read or not to read, as well as the FREEDOM to do so. (Yes, they have the freedom to complain about our choices, too, but it shouldn’t infringe on our freedoms.)
Have I read all those authors? No. Did I like everything I read by those authors who I, erm, read? Also no. But I don’t go around telling other people not to read their works. And neither should you.
Now, go read a banned book. Or three.
dSavannah note: For a more ‘scholarly’ take on Banned Books week, read my post from last year (I was teaching at the time, and used bits from my lectures in my blog).
From the Top Ten, I have only read A Stolen Life, and I would like to read Kite Runner. From other lists of banned books, I would like to read The Giver, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and A Handmaid’s Tale in 2016.
I’ll never understand why people try to censor others.
Of the top 10, I’ve only read the first one. Of your goals for 2016, I’ve read The Giver (and many of other books in the series) and A Handmaid’s Tale.