Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982. For more information on Banned Books Week, click here. According to the American Library Association, there were 326 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2011, and many more go unreported.
For a look at 50 of the most notable banned books click HERE
The 10 Most Challenged Titles of 2011
The Internet Girls Series by Lauren Myracle
Reason: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
The Color of Earth Series by Kim Dong Hwa
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence
My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
Alice Series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint
There are currently 25 books in this series
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit
What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit
Gossip Girl Series Cecily Von Ziegesar
Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit
There are currently 13 books in this series
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language; racism
I’ve been really curious what this banned books thing was all about, mainly about who is censoring books. Thanks for such an informative post. I learned tons! What you might be surprised to know is I’ve read over 50% of these books! Wow!
I’ve read most of them too. 🙂
Being an avid reader of EVERYTHING I think banning books is naive. Books are not 1 dimensional & to think so is absurd. You cannot take a book like The Hunger Games (as an example) and pigeon hole it with a statement like “it’s about kids killing kids” Does that happen in the book? Yes. Is it the message of the book? No. Reading (more often than not) is about reading between the lines. Discerning a message that speaks to you at whatever moment of your life you are currently in. That message might be complex (and take the harsh realities of kids killing kids to explain) or it might be something as simple as humor is joyous. The fact remains…it’s for the READER to decide. NOT someone else’s parent, or a librarian, or some numbers runner in an office who has never even read the book in question.
Wow…that was a rant. Sorry. Glad the article was helpful! 🙂