From the American Library Association website:
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).
BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.
For more information, click on the following link:
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.cfm
Not surprisingly, Wikipedia offers one of the most comprehensive list of books banned internationally. Here is a link to that resource as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_books
Need some BBW garb? Look at what Cafe Press has to offer:
http://shop.cafepress.com/censorship
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7 comments:
Naturally I went to the shopping web site first!
Has anybody got definitive information about Sarah Palin with regard to censorship and libraries? I want to be against her, because I'm liberal and she's not, but I don't want to be unfair.
Okay, here's what AP reporter Beth Fouhy had to say 19 hours ago:
The McCain campaign defended Palin's much-criticized inquiry into banning books at her hometown library, saying her questions were only hypothetical.
Shortly after taking office in 1996 as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 7,000 people, Palin asked the city's head librarian about banning books. Later, Palin told the librarian that she was being fired, although Palin backed off under pressure.
Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said Thursday that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and Palin wanted to understand how such disputes were handled.
Records on the city's Web site, however, do not show any books were challenged in Wasilla in the 10 years before Palin took office.
And now I'm back: Can we use this information to engage teens in a conversation about book-banning, about the political process, about subjectivity and objectivity, about reading?
Kathleen-
You are so right! I think this is a great opportunity to engage teens in discussions about freedom of speech and the political process.
I'm glad you posted the truth about the Palin book banning issue. I thought she had actually fired a librarian because the librarian wouldn't pull certain books from the shelves. Glad to know she didn't, but I still won't vote for her!
I’ve never understood the ideology behind banning books. I truly believe censorship is a form of ignorance, because it’s like turning a blind eye to things you don’t want to think about or know about. Just because you don’t agree with the content in a book doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it. I wonder if the people who try to get books banned have even read the books they are trying to censor; for example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often challenged for its racist content when the entire point of the book is about acceptance of others and standing up for others: Huck runs away with Jim, the slave, because he feels slavery is wrong and ends up becoming good friends with Jim. How is that racist? Other books are challenged because of sexual themes or for language, but covering up ideas you think are inappropriate does not mean that they will go away. I think most books get challenged because someone is uncomfortable with the content, but wisdom does not come from only learning about things you agree with. I want to read all the banned books to be informed and to see why they were challenged. Does anyone else have thoughts on banning books or why they get banned? It’s a topic that really interests me, because I majored in English in college and I have always loved the written word, especially when it is used to describe deeper ideas.
To answer Kara, I think people ban books because they're afraid of the content - often without having read the book, just the "offensive" page or paragraph; because someone else said it should be; because they might have to explain an idea to their children; or all of the above. It's certainly easier, in their minds, to just wish it (& all other offensive materials) would just go away.
Some years ago, SM had an adult patron who was livid about either the Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn movie, where he goes skinny-dipping in the Mississippi. You could see his bare behind for all of 3 seconds as he's jumping into the river, and that's all it took for this woman to declare that it should be pulled off the shelves so that no one else would EVER see it.
Then there was the lady in her 80s (at the time) about 15 years ago who took it upon herself to watch all the porn movies and write up just how awful/horrid/dehumanizing they were so that nobody else would have to go through what she was subjecting herself to. Ironic? You bet!
I have an opportunity to ban some books RIGHT NOW--my 9-year-old is enjoying graphic novels, and I find some of them shocking. So far I've been secretly returning to the library the ones I believe are inappropriate: since he checks out a dozen at a time I think he doesn't notice if one or two go missing. I am reluctant to forbid his reading them outright--I don't want to make them more appealing by making them off-limits. Some people disapprove of my lenience.
I've always been against banning books (duh!)--there's so much available to read that it's easy to avoid anything that makes you uncomfortable--that is, anything that makes you GROW.
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