Banned Books Week!

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September 20 to 27 is Banned Books Week. This is a great opportunity to exercise your democratic right to read whatever the hell you want. Run, don't walk to your nearest library to borrow a book that would be forbidden in a less free country. Then, read the book, and post about it here!

If you've read any of these books, what did you think about the book and/or the controversy?

For your edification and amusement, here is a list of the 100 top most-protested books (if anyone knows of a more recent or international list than this 1999-2000 USA one, please post it here). The one I find most shocking is "Where's Waldo?", which is about 5/6 of the way down the list. That Waldo. He's such a subversive.

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
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
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

 

I couldn't help notice harry potter in the list.. what's up with that? (since I don't know many of the titles, I can't ask what's up those =))

 

Making the assumption that the list is in numeric order, I find it interesting and more than a little hypocritical that people object to the GIRL'S version of "What's Happening To My Body?" significantly more than the BOY'S version.

 

I can see why Waldo would be banned - millions of decent people waste precious man hours finding that intellectual madman when they can be using their hands to uplift the people and the state!

Er, anyways, I find it a bit ironic that Farenheit 451 isn't on the list.

 

Tal, that list is of the books that people tried to have banned in the USA in 1999-2000, we are not talking about a historic event but a real and present danger. Most of them have actually been banned by various school boards and library boards. In less free times or places, they'd be banned at a national level or even burned. Book-burnings and national-level bannings have happened in almost every country of the world at some point in their history. There are still plenty of places in the world where books are banned, and there are plenty of people even in the US today who would have Harry Potter and the like banned at a national level. These people have been doing a really good job lately of getting various comic book sales prosecuted in a supposedly free country, which bodes very badly for novels. The whole point of celebrating Banned Books Week is to remember how important it is to preserve and exercise these freedoms. Young people can so easily forget that it is a continual fight to prevent authoritarian and religious groups from depriving us of the right to choose what we can read.

[Edit: can't get the link to work for some reason but here's a link about the Harry Potter situation http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=3037 ]

[ September 18, 2003, 22:47: Message edited by: Sprite ]

 

I don't see how, or why, people would ban books.
It's just... not right.
Isn't USA meant to be a free country, and yet people think they can ban books

 

I think that discussing the pros and cons of why one would object to a certain book or genre would be more productive. If a carer feels that a book is so bad that it should not be read by those in their care then discussion as to why is more useful than banning. You know the forbidden fruit situation...

To me avoidance or knowledge is better than banning.

 

The following list was taken from http://www.banned-books.com

"Those who burn books will, in the end, burn people."
- Written by Poet Heinrich Heine who's books were burned
by the Nazis

 

I thought Mein Kampf was banned as well

 

Mein Kampf is banned in more countries then only Germany. But the problem is, that one can get "Mein Kampf" or generally Nazi-relicts and Nazi-stuff from any country which allows its distribution, particulary over Amzon, which obviously is not to the liking of those countries, which have banned that book.

Me, personally, I'm a little bit nervous by the thought, that teenagers have access without trouble on copies from "the eternal jew" or "Mein Kampf".

"Michael" for example, is aviable if your 18 or allowance from an adult and the explaination why want to read it. One possible explanation could be for a school project. At least that worked for me and my school project.

 

Whats michael about?

BTW, you can easily find a digital copy of Mein Kampf on the Internet, should be a interesting read.

 

"Michael" is a book by Goebbels. In short, save the world and fight evil like arch-angel Michael did.

Yeah, you can all the stuff from the Internet, the simple trick is finding a provider in an Anglo-Saxon country, where it's legal. The bigger ones, which have business in Continental-European countries will not allow it in their contracts, because they do not want to lose their business.

By the way, Amazon doesn't have Mein Kampf in German. I guess it's an copyright issue. The copyright for the English-edition is by Hitlers British-publisher, the rights for the German edition by Germany, which does not allow publishing.

 

What disturbs me is that people are STILL trying to ban certain books today, even in the States and Canada. There've been big Harry Potter burning parties in some parts of the US. My feeling is, while this sort of thing isn't widespread (thank God) if we aren't vigilant as hell, it will become so again, and we'll have a lot more burning parties . . .

 

Apparently I did miss your point, Tal, and I apologise. I thought you were saying that no one banned books anymore.

With "run, don't walk to your nearest library..." I didn't mean that I thought that libraries were burning books as I typed and that you needed to get there to stop them, or anything like that! I just meant, "this is really important so don't forget to do it!". Hyperbole and rhetoric. I do think it's important to get the books from libraries so that you've made a public statement that you value these books. Just buying them or borrowing them from a friend does not, in my view, have the same societal symbolism.

 

*digs up her copies of said books*

I am deathly afraid of the future of Farenheit 415 coming to pass....

 

I thought that having your book banned in at least one country was the easiest way to make it sell by the truck load. It won't neccessarily get read *cough*Satanic Verses*cough* but it will sell, and the the Literary Establishment will fall over themselves to praise it (whilst not standing too close to the author ).

On a side note, the ability to anonymously obtain banned texts online has been done away with by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Now you can be tracked via IP every time you electronically obtain a banned text. (*Conspiracy Theory movie spoiler* The ability to monitor purchases of The Catcher In The Rye wasn't all that far fetched as was thought in 1997) The banned texts that would be tracked these days would be the writings of Middle Eastern leaders and that one about how to build a tank from a 1974 Skoda(1.1 litre minimum) and and six foot of iron sewer pipe.

[ September 20, 2003, 17:00: Message edited by: Bluin ]