Censorship is alive and well in America. And the fight against it has many fronts.
Led by the Christian Right, public school boards, teachers, public libraries, and public colleges and universities are all too often pressured to eliminate books from curricula, reading and recommended reading lists, and public library shelves.
Fortunately, The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) the American Library Association and other major organizations sponsor the annual Banned Books Week, “the only national celebration of the freedom to read.” Thousands of libraries and bookstores will sponsor events and exhibits during Banned Books Week, September 24 — October 1, — speaking-out against attempts to censor books and celebrating the freedom to read.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom received 547 reports of challenges — or attempts to remove books from schools and libraries — in 2004. Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War” was the most challenged book of last year. They also maintain a list of the 100 most censored titles.
Other sponsors of Banned Books Week include the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Banned Books Week is also endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.
This year, the ABSFFE has a Banned Books Week Handbook, and the American Library Association has a Banned Books Week Kit. Both have lots of resources, many of them, free.
There are Banned Books Week posters available to download. And of course, there are Banned Books Week tee-shirts, buttons and bumperstickers.
The American Library Association kit goes for $35 and includes three posters, a list of titles that have been challenged over the last year, 100 bookmarks and a Banned Books Week pin.
One suggested activity is to hand out the Campaign for Reader Privacy bookmarks and petition urging Congress to restore the safeguards for bookstore and library privacy that were eliminated by the PATRIOT Act. The bookmarks can be ordered free from the American Booksellers Association by calling ABA at (800) 637-0037, ext. 6635. The petition can be downloaded.
The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has a host of resources for Banned Books Week, including a discussion of book burning in history.
In one episode this year, a Colorado newspaper reported on February 3:
“…. a book that was being used as part of an English assignment was confiscated from freshmen at Norwood [Colorado] High School due to references of paganism and an alleged magnitude of profanity.
“Here in Norwood, a small group of parents sent letters to Superintendent Bob Conder, expressing their concern over, “Bless Me, Ultima,” a book being used in the classroom as a literature book. Conder said the books, about 2 dozen in total costing $6.99 each, were pulled from the classroom, and designated to be destroyed. The parents approached the superintendent and asked that they be able to burn the books instead of the school janitor destroying them.
“Conder granted them their request…. ”
Mark your calendars!
Banned Books Week:
September 24 — October 1, 2005
[Crossposted from Talk to Action]
The freedom to read.
Lets get ready to celebrate Banned Books Week!
Need to add that to my “want to read” list…
Good book – my wife read it years ago and got me to read it too. Nothing threatening about it except that it dares to show respect for the non-christian perspective. But then that’s plenty for a lot of ‘murkans these days.
This makes me want to run right down to my neighborhood library and kiss each and every employee on the lips.
http://booksense.com/
Booksense Booksense is an alliance of independent local bookstores. It’s the e-commerce element of the American Booksellers Association’s Book Sense program.
Every one I’ve ever encountered is great – fantastic places like
– Watermark in Wichita, KS,
– The Tattered Cover in Denver’s LoDo,
The famous Powell’s is also affiliated with booksense
Here’s how to find one near you
http://booksense.com/store/index.jsp
Support the independent booksellers in your community, and nationwide — shop at a bookstore with Book Sense
Local Booksense affiliates will undoubtedly be having “Banned Book Week” events – show up and become one of their regulars – undoubtedly find a lot of BooTrib type folks. (and then you can tell em about the Booman Tribune 🙂
That’s… a little scary!
Sorry, Lil, didn’t mean to frighten you.
Or they’ll try to ban kissing, too.
🙂
XOXOXOX
Librarians are our Patriots and Heros!
I went to your website and linked to the list of top 100 banned books.
It was interesting to see that there weren’t books like “the Anarchist’s Cookbook” on there, where one might make a logical case for repressing information – not that I would, by any means, but at least there would be some logic there post 9/11…
Running down the list, they seem to have three themes running through the books, which I find very telling about the kinds of people that want to ban books:
How else to explain banning Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn than #3?
(Yeah, yeah, I know – they don’t like the way Jim is portrayed in Huck Finn. “Racist.” But anybody “with a lick o’ sense” can easily see that the whole point of the book is that Jim – despite having no “book learnin'” is the most noble and wisest character of the bunch. The whole gaggle of us working class Catholic high school boys could see that at age 15. But I digress from my main rant…)
…So the kinds of people that want to ban books have issues with (1) the right to privacy and free association, (2) freedom of religion, and (3) free speech.
AND THEY DARE CALL US UNAMERICAN!!!
Next season’s banned book – the Bill of Rights. 😛
And in addition, this lovely trend to go with the upsurge in violence against GLBT people-
It’s a sad time in this country, it really is.
How else to explain banning Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn…
Dem, a lot of people object to perceived racism especially in Huck. In my daughters very hip and supposedly enlightened San Francisco school where I worked in the library, a teacher wanted Huckleberry Finn removed because a girl had started reading it and gotten freaked out by the language. Many schools use the occasion of Banned Books Week to debate whether Mark Twain was racist himself or lampooning racists. I believe the latter.
I believe he was lampooning them too, but maybe I didn’t make that clear. He certainly lampooned them about lots of other things in Huck Finn – from religious revival meetings to tasteless decorating (the figurine with a clock in its belly in a Kentucky home, if I remember correctly).
No, you made it clear. I guess I wasn’t clear in saying that there are a lot of well-meaning people that see racism in it, and want to keep it from kids for that reason.
I loved that book and read it several times as a kid. But the way Jim was talked about made me uncomfortable, now that I think about it, though I didn’t have words for the feelings. I think kids are more literal than adults and satire is kind of lost on kids sometimes. That’s why using Huck in the classroom to talk about censorship, as well as great literature, is such a good idea.
Banned Books Week is a great occasion to highlight and teach about the First Amendment and Patriot Act infringements on the Constitution. However the books on ALA’s list are mostly quite mainstream books that aren’t in real any danger of disappearing, though winger adults try to keep them away from kids.
On the other hand, ALA isn’t going out of its way to champion minority political views published only by small presses that are off the radar for most acquisitions librarians and bookstore owners. And let’s not forget what happened to James Hatfield, author of the Dubya bio Fortunate Son. Hatfield’s book was yanked off the shelves by its publisher St. Martins Press and he was hounded to death, over the book’s allegations of Bush cocaine use.
Amnesty International’s website directs our attention to people who are persecuted or have even vanished altogether “because of the writings that they produce, circulate or read.”
Ok Fred, this is the 3rd diary that you’ve written where I just HAD to follow links and spend hours-as I did again today-perusing cool stuff. And I do mean hours-I just spent almost 3 hours going from one link to another. Reading about banned books, great quotes, book burnings, signed the petition, read about the stupid case in 1989(here in CA.)where two schools banned the illustrated Little Red Riding Hood….don’t ask.
So I’m begging you, make your next diary boring, ok and give me a break.
I also came across this great quote that I think sums up banning books, ideas by Noam Chomsky: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Thank you for doing this!!!
Some don’t believe it when I tell them that there are groups trying to censor books.
I’ve been “challenged’ in way myself. I used to read to my children’s school all the time, to classes they weren’t even in. Till one day a teacher asked me to read Harry Potter to her 2nd grade class. She asked me to committ to reading a chapter book. I said YES! But… some group of people who didn’t even have kids in the school got upset… I was then told that any book I read to any class had to be approved and a letter of permission sent to each child’s guardian.
The teacher, myself and the librarian (we lost her a few years back due budget cuts) were all pissed.
I didn’t read to that school for years. It was like being slapped in the face with broken glass for me.
I still have kids that come up to me and tell me that I’m the only adult other than a teacher who ever read to them.
I now read at the public library and the teachers bring their students there.
Most of the books banned, too – are childrens stories. Dahl and Blume are big hits with the book burners.
I love reading outloud to children. I love seeing their mouths and eyes wide open. I don’t sit in a chair when I read. I walk around and hopefully try to breath life into the story.
Harvy Potter’s Balloon Farm – the best story to read ever 🙂
I love you did this diary – THANK YOU!!!
PS. my kids took part in the summer library reading program and TODAY we turned in the logs. 1,432 for Danni and just barely 1,000 for my son. The library gets to purchase a new book in their honor. 🙂
Good for you for all your reading, Janet. I always suggest to people who have time on their hands that they volunteer to read to children in school. They need it so badly. It’s a shame what happened to you.
Harvey Potter’s Balloon Farm.. that should say.
Great reader – but I’m a horrid typist 🙂
I did a ton of reading to my son when he was super young as a part of speech therapy and …sensory integration. Some docs told me I was in denail reading in a room to my son who they thought might be deaf andlater on incapable of “caring” about a story.
But.. it was well worith it. He and his sister who was in the room while I read, both adore books.
My son even tries to give characters voices too.
He now reads TO me 🙂 When I was super sick with the flu… he came in and read to me from the Sunday Comics.
I grew up reading everything. Papers, hell, even the cereal boxes were read front to back.
I think we are missing that in school. My kids CAN’T get enough time in a night to read for pleasure during school year.
a few years ago, there was a fundraiser held for a local center for folks with mental illnesses. It went fablously well.
The way it worked was as a public reading. You pay X $ for a ten minute slot and read from whatever book you want. Well Everyone wanted in. The mayor, the city councilors, the musicians, and of course the poets, but also the professors. its was great. there were not enough slots to fill the demand.
I have always thought it would be great to do fundraisers for anticensorship groups, and libraries and schools in this way. Read a banned book for the library, the ACLU or whatever.
Each participant could tell the story of how the book was banned somewhere, and read a section, any section, whatever speaks to them: from To Kill A Mockingbird; from of Mice and Men; from Ulysses; from Harry Potter. Whatever.
An amazing idea. 🙂
thanks. I hope people take it and run with it. But if they do, I hope they will tell us about it, here and at talk to action (which has gone buggy. With any luck, we’ll fix is tomorrow).
Even if there isn’time for people to get it together as a fundraiser, even doing public readings of banned/censored books, it would be a very cool event.
The Kiss of Judas– because of sex
A Switch in Time– because of the new age spirituality
Mind Blindness– because of my anti christian coalition slant
sheesh…