Banned Book Week

As you know from reading blogs around the blogosphere the week of September 24th to October 1st is Banned Book Week in the US. If you want to know more please check out ALA to find out more about it.

The  Canadian Banned Book Week will be February 26th to March 3rd 2012. I plan on taking part in this one too.

As you can see it doesn’t matter where you live because no matter how much we have freedom of speech there seems to be people out there who think that its okay to have books banned.

To clear up challenged and banned books:

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.  Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.  Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.

Here is the top 10 challenged books for 2010

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
   Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
   Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit
4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, and sexually explicit
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence
6. Lush, by Natasha Friend
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
7. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
   Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
   Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, and religious viewpoint
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
   Reasons:  homosexuality and sexually explicit
10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
    Reasons: religious viewpoint and violence

I believe in the freedom to read and not have someone tell me what I can and can’t read. So during this very important week I am going to attempt to read a challenged/banned book.

I am still pondering which one I want to read. Do I want to go with a 2010 one or something earlier?

I have to admit when I was looking at all the challenged books I realized that I have quite a few of those books and I plan to make it a point to read more of them.

So I think this week one I am going to attempt to read is:

TTYL (along with the other books in the series, TTFN, L8R, etc.) by Lauren Myracle was the 3rd most challenged book of 2008 for the following reasons:

offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

I have had this in my TBR pile for quite some time so I think this is the perfect book to read. I will be reading this and posting my review and thoughts on this book sometime this week. Perhaps if time permits I will attempt to read another book.

Happy reading everyone
Don’t forget to make it a point to read a banned or challenged book this week.