Gilda

Sept. 24-Oct. 1 is banned books week for 2005.

First, a disclaimer. I'm not posting this because of the theme of this years announcement, but because intellectual freedom is important to me.

Banned Books Week raises awareness of attacks on gay, lesbian-themed books

The ten most challenged books in American Public Libraries and public school libraries, 2004:

The most challenged authors:

Why books are challenged:



The 100 most challenged books from 1990-2000:
When I have a parent object to the material in a book we're reading in class, such as The Chocolate War, number one on the list, I suggest to them that they take the opportunity to discuss exactly what it is that they object about the book with their child, and invite them to come discuss the book with the class. Most of the time, they haven't even read it.

Students are allowed, upon parental request, to opt out of a book. That's fine with me; parents should take an active role in their children's educations. They shouldn't be allowed, however, to decide for everyone else what they are or aren't allowed to read. That's why this is insidious.

You want to object to The Perks of Being a Wallflower? Don't object because it has sexual themes, homosexual characters, or drugs in it, object because it's poorly written tripe.

Read a banned book during banned book week and post what you thought of it here. Try to pick something new, something you haven't read before. Praise it, dissect it, attack it, tell us what's good or bad about it, but decide for yourself. Don't let someone else decide for you.

Gilda

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MooseMan3000

Ahahahaha! I laughed out loud many, many times when I read the books that were on that list. Most of them were just absurd. I mean, In the Night Kitchen? I can just see the headlines now: Appalled Nation's Children Bathing in Milk and Eating Cookies Nude!

Actually, that sounds pretty good. I might go bake some cookies now.

I agree with you that most of those books are terrible. But the fact that people oppose them for content - content they don't even know firsthand - is just plain stupid. I'm sorry you have to deal with retarded parents. I'm glad, however, that you can help make their kids not quite so dumb.

alansmithee

Staying away from the censorship/homosexuality issue, I will say that the #1 book on the 1990-2000 (actually a series) is probably the scariest thing I have experienced in entertainment media (books, video games, movies, tv [but excluding internet, there's things on the internet far scarier, but for different reasons]). It's not the stories, which are pretty much all "classic" ghost/folklore stories (things like the hook, various death premonitions, etc.), but the illustrations. To this day, some of the illustrations can freak me out. They are very eerie, black and white, surrealist, and totally creepy.

ngdawg

Many of those books are required reading in the schools here.
To Kill a Mockingbird??? And my kids read Captain Underpants books when they were in 4th and 5th grade!!!
These lists boggle the mind....

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Siege

I read Of Mice and Men when I was in grade 10 for my English class. Didn't think it was anything that a group of high schoolers couldn't handle.

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This part just makes my posts easier to find

Grasshopper Green

I read many of the 100 books when I was younger, some while I was in elementary school. It makes me sad and irritated that students in school right now won't read some of these because a few parents object. I didn't realize that some are pulled from public libraries...that is an outrage. A lot of them have sensitive themes, but they are subjects that many, many children deal with on a daily basis (Blubber by Judy Blume comes to mind immediately); is not reading about them and thinking about them going to make them go away?

Gilda, I will take your advice and read a book on the list that I haven't read before. Thanks for the post.

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ChistledStone

Man, Captain Underpants, keep crusading! Don't let being kicked out of public schools everywhere stop you from using annoying alliteration!

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Ustwo

On the other hand...

Was pretty much shown to be a political hack piece with false data used to create a politically motivated conclusion.

Of Mice and Men I read 2nd year in highschool, great book.

The rest (2004 top 10) I know nothing about beyond maybe having heard the title mentioned before.

The cynical side in me wonders if this is another form of advertizing for booksellers

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Zephyr66

Some people just need to accept the fact that people used to say Nigger... jesus christ.

ObieX

People still say nigger.

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Zephyr66

yeah, but theres a social stigma in most places now. I just mean that everyone back then said nigger.

JumpinJesus

I actually use this list to seek out authors whose work I've yet to read. Some may view this as a marketing tool for booksellers, but the list is very real and the books challenged have often been bestsellers before being challenged.

Like Gilda touched upon, it is often discovered during the course of events that those wishing to remove books from shelves have rarely ever read the books they wish to ban. Their motivations come from hearing from someone somewhere that there was something bad in the books. Some say knowledge is power, but all too often ignorance is even more powerful.

I also urge everyone who reads this thread to seek out these books and read them.

Thanks for reminding me to stop by a book store this weekend, Gilda.

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jorgelito

Wow! Thanks for the post Gilda. I am really shocked actually. Are we sure this is America we're talking about? What happened? That's really scary.

I'm relieved that my bibles are safe: After reading part of the article and the list started, I thought, uh oh, my Bible will be banned for sure cause it has sex, violence, racism etc in it...a lot of it.

That really boggles the mind, banning a bunch of books one knows nothing about.

jorgelito

Wait, are you saying that's a bad thing?

Slavakion

How much do you want to bet that To Kill a Mockingbird is controversial because of "racist themes"? It really wouldn't surprise me.

guthmund

I was going to put up a reminder Monday, Gilda, but you beat me to it and did a much better job than I probably would've. Thank you.

I find the idea of a 'challenged' book offensive. A book should challenge. Your beliefs, your ideology, your mind, et cetera, et cetera. The notion that a book should be culled from the compendium because a few narrow minds disagrees is distasteful. It seems an awful lot of trouble to go through in order to 'challenge' a book when just not reading it would've worked just as well...


P.S.- I've got a whole stack of 'banned books' I plan on reading this next week.

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Gilda

Be that as it may, the answer to poor scholarship or politically biased work isn't censorship, it's countering the argument presented with a better one.

I'd really prefer not to debate the merits of the book here as that's not what's at issue.

Booksellers use it as an excuse for promoting certain classic books that end up on the list year after year, true, but that's a far cry from saying that the purpose has anything to do with book sales. The ALA has an agenda, of course, and that's to promote libraries, literacy, reading, and intellectual freedom, and they seem to welcome the publicity they get from booksellers.

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If anyone needs a specific recommendation from this years list, the first two, The Chocolate War and Fallen Angels are excellent YA books, and the last two, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Of Mice and Men are both very good for adults or high school aged kids. In the Night Kitchen is one of the great children's picture books.

This is the very reason why many of the books end up being challenged, and why so many are YA books.

A common scenario is that a teacher assigns a book to her class, usually for English or Social studies (our physical science teacher has his students read a novel each semester, but that's unusual). Sometimes it's the students who object, but far more often, it's the parents. In past decades, schools sometimes took an all or nothing approach, insistng that students be required to read the assigned material or fail that portion of the course. This foolishly forced parents to attack the assignment of the book for any student.

Most schools currently have an opt out system in which a student, with parental consent, can refuse to read a particular book on moral or ethical grounds, or because the find it offends or violates their religious beliefs, and so forth. A book of equivilent length and difficulty can be substituted. This seems an obvious solution, one that could make everyone happy, right? Not exactly. Parents and activist groups on both sides of the political spectrum will still attack the assignment of a book to any student. Opting out their own children isn't good enough for them; if they find the book objectionable, then nobody's children should be allowed to read it.

I remember a few years ago one celebrated case. A white woman challenged Huckleberry Finn based on the idea that it was racist. The school offered an alternative book for the girl to read. She'd be given an independent study packet and allowed to read and do the work in the library. A perfect compromise, isn't it? A few other parents thought so, opting their children out. The student doesn't have to read a book she objects to, parents who don't object have their children reading the book.

This wasn't good enough. The book had to be romoved from the curriculum altogether. Her reasoning? Her daughter was being deprived of the free public education required by law, because she wasn't getting the benefit of the teacher's expertise and class discussion. Fortunately the courts were of the very reasonable position that the school was providing the required instruction, but she was choosing not to take advantage of it. Interviews made it very clear that she was attempting to protect the black students from the book, which seems more than a bit condescending to me.

Sometimes such attacks succeed, and books are removed from the assigned reading lists, but kept in the library. Sometimes this isn't good enough. Parents and activist groups, or both together, have sought to have books removed from school libraries, again, playing censor for other people's children.

We've actually had parents attack a list of books distributed to students at the end of the year as recommended summer reading. These aren't assignments, nor are they books the kids are checking out of the school library. It's a list of books the school has put together that we (the school district) think would benefit the students as independent summer reading. They'd have to go buy or check the books out of the public library. The only way a student could be exposed to one of these books is if they chose it and made the effort to seek it out themselves.

It's mind-boggling.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

Gilda

That's part of it, but more often it's foul language and violence. In the book, Scout's tomboyishness is further developed by her having a cursing problem. The attempted murder, accidental death, and finally imlpied murder near that end all lead to objections based on violence.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

flstf

As I recall from my high school days one sure way to get the kids to read a book was to try and ban it. When they tried to ban The Catcher in the Rye from our class reading almost every student went out of their way to read it, even kids in other classes and grade levels, .

I recall a few years ago being in a Barnes and Noble book store in Seattle where they had a table set up exclusively with banned books. They had an information sheet posted saying that one of the most banned books in American schools was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At the time I had no idea it was so controversial.

Bill O'Rights

Every single time that I see that list my blood boils.
THAT is probably what pisses me off the most. If you want to be narrow minded and ignorant...fine. But, what gives you the right to drag the rest of us into your own little self-imposed hell?

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Strange Famous

I heard that some senator actually wanted to ban from all school and public libraries any book not only including a homosexual theme, but written by a homosexual.

I'd like to think he was some kind of crackpot and no one at all listened to him... but it's still a bit scary, isn't it?

No more Shakespeare for the kids.

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Strange Famous

Im sorry to say Ive only read 11 of the so called most dangerous books.

It's kind of frightening that people would challenge something like Brave New World... I suppose they must have objected to all those Soma addicts and the free sex. Surprised no objections to Lolita.

And I know its kind of a bad taste joke, but I cant not quote Bill Hicks on "Daddy's New Roomate" and "Heather's Two Mommies"

It was something like

"now, can you believe that they are actually giving these books to grade school children? Heather's Two Mommies and ... Daddy's New Roomate. Now, I'm a pretty liberal guy, but I have to say that this is absolutely disgusting, this is filth, this is wrong. I am of course talking about Daddy's New Roomate. Now Heather's Two Mommies... thats pretty cool...."

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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

highthief

Well, they're not all worth reading just because they are on a list somewhere. You're not missing anything by not reading "sex" by Madonna (other than is being worth a bunch more than I paid for it years ago).

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Charlatan

In High School in an English writing course, we read Catcher in the Rye. One of the lessons started with our teacher, Mr. Humphries, writing the word, "FUCK" in big block letters on the board.

What followed was one of the most memorable classes I'd ever had in High School. Debate, discussion, etc... I don't think I had anything similar until University.

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Ustwo

Yes but I do think if a book is shown to be based on false data, that it should not be presented as a scholarly work. It at best belongs next to all the books by political pundits, and I have no problem with people complaining about it being in a library. You wouldn't allow math books that are factually incorrect and expect people to look for other books which 'present a better argument'.

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Strange Famous

political books shouldnt be in libraries?

there is a difference between a factually mathematical incorrect equation, and a political manipulation of statistics. All political or social studies seek to manipulate statistics in one way or another,

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Gilda

Perhaps not, but people who want to read it should still be allowed to do so, not have that decision made for them by others. I think The Man Who Would Be Queen is a hack job with falsified data deliberately manipulated to fit an existing agenda. The man who wrote it lost his position at a highly regarding learning institution and much standing in the academic community. Sounds similar, doesn't it? Yet I'd defend the right of this book to be in a public library, while at the same time pointing people interested in the subject to True Selves, a much, much better book on the same subject.

I view "creation science" as thinly veiled religious propaganda, but it has it's place in the library; it should be available to those who want to read about it.

Cool. I haven't read it, nor do I intend to, but that seems a reasonable solution to me. Put it with political opinion books.

This is where you lose me. Censorship is good if we censor the right books?

Math and history are hardly equivilent, but yeah, if there were a math book with errors in it, I wouldn't campaign to have it removed, I'd simply recommend a better book. We don't discard older science books merely because they've been proven incorrect by newer methods. I think the bible has been disproven by science, but that's not a good reason to remove it.

The best way to counter a bad argument is with the truth, not by removing the right to present that argument.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

Slavakion

Oh, yeah. I forgot about the end of the book.

(Although my point was that although TKAM has racist themes, it points out the fallacy of racism.)

Strange Famous

yeah, its kind of like people wanting to ban "Brave New World" for the drugs and sex... even though the whole point is that the endless material pleasure was demeaning and dehumanizing.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

shesus

Actually Barnes and Nobles has a table dedicated to banned books. I was surprised by some of them, but can understand why some people want them banned. Typically, the person who wants something banned doesn't agree with the topics in the book. This is very biased, but such is life.
I think that a majority of these books are some of the best literature. They make people think, which many people don't do these days unfortunately.
I just recently bought D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Love. However, jj and I have many of the books that were banned for one reason or another.
I also challenge people to choose books and read them.

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Charlatan

I remember when we read John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, my friend's Mom went in to our teacher to complain that the book exhibited prejudice and didn't think this was something that should be read by those in grade 10.

While she was well meaning she was just out to lunch. The whole lesson revolved around prejudice as a negative force in our culture, amongst other things.

Like many of the books on the list, many contain some pretty awful scenes. So does life. The context in which these books are taught is where the difference is made.

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SpikeQX99

I was surprised to see how many books on that list I had read while in high school and possibly even junior high! Did I find them offensive then? No I didn't. I found some hard to get through, but certainly not because of the message they were trying to convey.
What they did for me was to show how things were different in the times they were written, whether it be for the racial motives, or the violence or whatever. They didn't all have bright shiny "they all lived happily ever after" endings. Some were fitting, but others were quite moving to me. *Of Mice and Men particularly* That still blows me away the ending there and I dont' know why particularly. It just bothers me I guess.

These books were challenging, because if you read them for just the words alone, they didn't mean much. But if you read for detail, and you can see the messages in the words, then the books take on a whole other side.

I do not agree with banning books at all. They are there to be read and comprehended, even enjoyed, or, if they comprimise your morals, ethics, and beliefs then they are there to be enjoyed by those who do not find issue with them.

Read up! Go out and read the books on this list, or any list for that matter! you never know what you will find and enjoy.

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analog

Two things happen every time I see this list come back around:

1. I'm pissed that people are still actively taking their time to get books banned, in this the year 2005, and
2. That there's never any Shakespeare in the list, which makes me laugh. Maybe they don't count books of plays, but i'd think Bill should get an honorable mention... he's got suicide, murder, violence galore, sex, sexuality- for those who can read and fully understand the language, they know some of his material is down-right filthy. lol

Ananas

Shhh...don't give them any ideas.

Using the criteria in #2 of your point, the same could be said of the bible.

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ObieX

I don't see why the bible wouldn't be banned under these criteria. Violence against gays/lesbians, whores, tribal warfare against other people because their god is different (Kill off all the males, enslave/rape the females[and ya know this really bugged me.. you'd think after being set free from egypt they would be the last people to take slaves.. but whatever]), endorsement of bigotry on every level, "religous viewpoint", nudity, "offensive language", "sexual content", "modeling bad behavior", "political viewpoint". Pretty much has the entire list of reasons for banning. It should be #1.

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cellophanedeity

Hmm, I've read 25 of these books, and I only knew that a couple of them were/are challenged.

Really, who would ban Where's Waldo? I can't believe how nutty some people are! I suppose it makes sense that The Anarchist's Handbook was on this list, based upon what I've seen of it, but really...

To be honest, I'm quite suprised that Nabakov's Lolita isn't on the list.

(not to say I'm disappointed, it's a brilliant book, but based upon the subject matter I figured it would be)

maleficent

Back when I was in 8th grade, i was editor on the school paper... one of the columns in the paper was a book review... The book I chose to review was Are You there go, it's me, Margaret, by Judy Blume.

I got sent to the principal's office for having dared to review such a scandalous book (Oh dear they talked about menstruation and cussed a few times) my mother was called to the office (my mother was, at the time, a professor of English Literator at Columbia University) to have me scolded. My mother (who was a tough old broad from NJ) basically told the principal (this was a nun) that I was reading, what exactly was the problem? The book review was gramatically correct and spell checked, why was there a problem with it?

Sister whatever the heck her name was thought it was absolutely scandalous... my dear sweet mother then suggested perhaps she wanted to get my father, the attorney, involved...

The paper ran as is...

In High school, the school board, none of the members whom had students in the school, decided that certain books were objectionable to our young minds... Catcher in the Rye (A bad book, but not scandalous) Lord of the Flies (slightly more entertaining) Animal Farm (Excellent book) of mice and men (I still love this book) were all on the banned list. Mrs R-T our sophmore year english teacher, had some serious tenure... and taught each of those books, over the objections and threats of the school board (but every single parent in that class basically said that any book was a good book, so why didn't they just chill...)

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jwoody

As an outsider, it appears to me that in 23 years 'Banned Books Week' has achieved the grand sum of.... fuck all.

Are they still protesting to get the same books forced into public and school libraries, or is the top 100 banned books list updated annually?

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Gilda

The protest is not to get books "forced into public and school libraries", it's to advocate for the freedom to choose books without outside censorship. The books are already in school and public libraries, and part of school curricula, which is why they are attacked.

It isn't about forcing them in where they aren't wanted, it's about not allowing a vocal minority to prevent everyone from having access to them.

The fact that the same books keep getting challenged seems to indicate some success to me. If the books weren't in the libraries, there would be no or little need for protest.

The top ten list is updated yearly. The top 100 list goes by decade, like the census.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

jwoody

I see, I totally missed the point.

I don't know where I got the impression that the books had been banned.



I don't see how Banned Books Week is going to stop people complaining about said books. It may draw more complaints to by drawing attention to them but, I suppose, anything which encourages children to learn to read is a good thing. I wonder how many have read these books just because someone told them they shouldn't.

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