Banned book week

[3mnkids]

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/info.html

 

Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982.

Im taking my kids to the library later today and have them each pick a formally banned book to read   
Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009
http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/21stcenturychallenged/2009/index.cfm

[flackbait]

I'm all for banning twilight!

[Trevor]

Believe it or not, but Anna Sewell's famous book Black Beauty was banned in South Africa in the 1950s. 

[Newt]

Believe it or not, but Anna Sewell's famous book Black Beauty was banned in South Africa in the 1950s. 

I am assuming because of the title?   

[Trevor]

Believe it or not, but Anna Sewell's famous book Black Beauty was banned in South Africa in the 1950s. 

I am assuming because of the title?   

Partly yes: the story goes that the Censor Board received a consignment of books minus covers one day and one of them was this book which was immediately banned. Ermmmmm....... no one bothered to read the thing first! 

If the above makes your jaw drop, remember these were the same idiots who banned TV as "it is the Devil's box". 

[Newt]

Partly yes...

Oh I am sure that had they wanted to they could have made a case for the story being a thinly-veiled metaphor for the plight of non-whites under the then-current social system.

Or maybe they assumed it was some sort of (then) racially taboo porn?

 

(I'm not serious Trev: it boggles the mind that they were!)

[dean]

I don't get it: Twilight as a banned school textbook?  I'm sure it's not worthy of study anyway, but why?  [not that I'm complaining, but still...]

[Trevor]

Or maybe they assumed it was some sort of (then) racially taboo porn?

Considering some of the idiots that governed SA's morals since 1933, I would not be a bit surprised if that were the case.

(I'm not serious Trev: it boggles the mind that they were!)

They were deadly serious about unknown things corrupting the morals of the nation so they banned everything, just to make sure.   

[Mr_Vindictive]

It floors me to see that Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" is STILL causing issues.  Wow.

[Rev. Powell]

None of these books are actually "banned."  I can buy any of them I want or rent them from the public library.  The challenges involve whether they're appropriate to school libraries or to a curriculum because of the age group.  If we're going to say "Catcher in the Rye" is "banned" because some middle school system somewhere doesn't want to stock it in their library, it seems to me we might as well say PIRANHA 3D is "banned" because theaters won't let anyone under 17 in unless accompanied by a parent.   

I don't know of a single banned book in the USA.  This isn't the 1800s anymore (it's not even the 1900s). 

[Jim H]

None of these books are actually "banned."  I can buy any of them I want or rent them from the public library.  The challenges involve whether they're appropriate to school libraries or to a curriculum because of the age group.  If we're going to say "Catcher in the Rye" is "banned" because some middle school system somewhere doesn't want to stock it in their library, it seems to me we might as well say PIRANHA 3D is "banned" because theaters won't let anyone under 17 in unless accompanied by a parent.   

I don't know of a single banned book in the USA.  This isn't the 1800s anymore (it's not even the 1900s). 

Yeah, which is interesting as there are MOVIES that you could argue are banned (though still VERY few, maybe just two or three are arguable.).  The lack of any real banned speech is one of the things that I love best about the US of A.

Still, as I've been working in a library for a while, it's interesting when you hear a book get challenged.  I can tell you that virtually everyone who works in libraries, at least in St. Louis, gets extremely annoyed when people do this.  Usually the response is to look into it, and then quickly realize people are being asinine and then ignore them. 

[BoyScoutKevin]

As a retired librarian living in the state of Texas, I still belong to the Texas Librarians' Association or the TLA. Thus, I get their quarterly publication  "Texas Library Journal," and the past school year, as in past school years, the editors polled school librarians across Texas to see what books people objected to being in the Texas school system.

These are not banned books, but these are books that people want to ban from Texas school classrooms and school libraries.

The titles range from David J. Pelzer's "A Child Called It" to Anne Rooney's "Zombies on the Loose."

And include these reference works . . .

Darling Kindersley Visual Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia Horrorifica
Guiness Book of World Records [WTF?! I've read and used this for years, and I've never seen anything objectionale in it.]
The Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft
Time-Life Magazine
The World's Most Evil People

And these graphic novels
Las Aventuras del Super-bebe panal
Bleach
The Creature from the Depths
Naruto

And these books that are so offensive, that they made films, so movie audiences could object.
Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner"
Daniel Keyes "Flowers for Algernon," which Cliff Robertson turned into a film called "Charley," for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor
Jeff Kinney's "The Diary of a Wimpy Kid"

And even famous people are not immue from having their books challenged.
Stephen King's "It"
J. D. Salingers's "Catcher in the Rye"
Jerry Seinfeld's "halloween" [Yes. That Jerry Seinfeld]

And Thomas Hughes "Tom Brown's Schooldays" [WTF?! Which only has been "objectionalbe" for the past 153 years, and is so "objectionable" they've only been making film versions of it for the past 94 years and TV versions of it for the past 39 years.]

Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight."  Now I can see banning that from Texas school classrooms and libraries, because it is so badly written, but "bad writing" has seldom if never been used as a reason to ban a book.

I have some more figures, which I should post, but as I don't have them in front of me, I'll have to post them next time. Until then . . . Enjoy!

[BoyScoutKevin]

Okay. First of all I have to correct something from my previous post. (That's what I get for not reading the footnotes.) The survey was not done by the editors of the magazine, but by ACLU of Texas. The editors of the magazine just published the survey, as they have done in previous years.

Banned Books by Age Range
elementary school 29%
intermediate school 8%
middle school 50%
high school 13%

18-year-olds can vote if they want to. And we trust them to be mature enough to make the right decision for whom to vote. But we do not trust them as being mature enough to go to the school library and make the right decision as to what to read or not to read.

While these book are not totally banned, as they are available in other places, they are made more inacessible which discourages reading. What should be done is to make books more accessible and thus encourage reading.

Reasons for Challenges
(Books Often Challenged for Multiple Reasons)
other or no reason give 14%
politically, socially, and/ or racially offensive 11%
offensive to religious beliefs 12%
drug and/or alcohol use 17%
violence and/or horror 18%
profanity and/or poor language 29%
sex and/or nudity 44%

When a book is banned, the ban is permanent. Because there is often no mechanism to go back and review why a book was banned the next school year or any school year thereafter.

What book to read in the classroom is a teaching decision, but by banning a book, we take that decision out of the hands of the teacher and often give it to someone who knows less about teaching than the teacher.

Outcome of challenge
retained 36%
banned 24%
restricted 20%
alternate book allowed 10%
decision pending 6%
restricted for that child only 4%

"Alternate book allowed." I approve of that, because that makes the parent(s) the final arbiter as to what their child reads, but parent(s) do not have the right to tell every other child, but their own, in the school system, what to read or not to read.

It depends upon how you define the word "trextbook." But Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" is probably not so much a textbook as supplemental reading for a course. And as badly as I think it is written, it is widely read.

More next year.