Banned Books Week

You may not know it, but this week is Banned Books Week. When I first heard about this last year, I was kind of surprised that so many popular and well-respected classics have been banned in recent history. Sure, we've all heard that The Catcher in the Rye was banned back in the day, but now? Yup, it's still going on as is 21st century book burning in the United States of America. The American Library Association compiled a list of the most frequently challenged books from 1990 - 2000 and they include:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The full list can be found here.

From the New York Times:

"Censorship comes in a lot of ways and from all directions," said Marie Nesthus, chief librarian of the Donnell Media Center, which is part of the New York Public Library system.

The urge to censor is as old as recorded civilization, but it took modern democracy to make censorship a participatory sport, in which any individual could try to control what everyone else was allowed to see.

Public schools and libraries are particularly vulnerable. For instance, a mother in Arkansas who did not want her children reading Harry Potter books because they "promote witchcraft" succeeded in restricting access to them for all children in her local libraries. A small but vocal group in Bushwick, Brooklyn, mistaking "Nappy Hair," by the black author Carolivia Herron, for a racist text, drove a white teacher out of her school for reading it to the class. Since 1991, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom has compiled an annual list of books that librarians, teachers or others report have been challenged; there were 547 challenges in 2004, up 25 percent from 2003...

"This wave started with the religious right around 1980,"[Judy Blume, 2004 National Book Award winner] said. "And it's contagious. It has spread, so that anybody, including the liberal left, can say, 'I don't want my kid to read that book, therefore I don't want that book around for any kid to read.' "

For more information please visit the American Library Association and Amnesty International.