Skip to main content

Banned Books Week



September 24 - October 1 is Banned Books Week

 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 11,000 books have been challenged since 1982.

The 10 most challenged titles of 2010 were:
And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
Lush, by Natasha Friend
What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
Twilight (series), by Stephenie Meyer

This year, for the first time, readers from around the world will be able to participate virtually in Banned Books Week, Sept. 24 – Oct.1. During this year’s celebration of Banned Books Week, readers will be able to proclaim the virtues of their favorite banned books by posting videos of themselves reading excerpts to a dedicated YouTube channel.  Check out the channel here: Virtual Read-Out

To get more information, visit the website at Banned Books Week

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing with Grief

Below are some sites that can help you cope with the grieving process. Death and Grief Teen Grief Support Help for Teens Teens and Grief Support for Grieving Teens Grief Speaks: Death of a Friend

CLASSIC YA BOOKS THAT MADE YOU FEEL SEEN

  K.W. Colyard   Jul 26, 2023 SPEAK   BY LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON I’m sure I’d heard of another book about rape before  Speak  came along. Hell, I might even have read one. But these days? This is the only book I can remember that dealt with one of the myriad possible reactions to sexual assault: silence.  Speak  and other books that deal with similar subject matter have the ability to empower victims of abuse to label what’s happened to them and seek help. ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET  BY JUDY BLUME Once a staple on banned books lists, Judy Blume’s most famous novel has been teaching preteens about puberty — including menstruation and boob exercises — since 1970.  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret  was far ahead of its time, being one of the first children’s books to show an interfaith family on the page, and — along with Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik — depicted a child allowed to make up her own mind about which religion she wanted to follow. THE CAT ATE MY GYMSUIT  BY PAULA

JEWISH YA BOOKS: MORE THAN THE HOLOCAUST

 by  Jaime Herndon   Oct 27, 2021 I can remember the first time I really felt “seen” in a book. It was Judy Blume’s  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret . Margaret’s parents had an interfaith marriage, like my parents. I’d never seen that before in a book, and it felt special to me. I don’t remember reading many of the Holocaust books people say they read as kids (Lois Lowry’s  Number the Stars  comes to mind, which is actually about a non-Jewish girl), although we did read  The Diary of Anne Frank  in school. To put it bluntly, we didn’t need to read many of those books at my Jewish day school. The history was in many of our families, with grandparents having numbers on their arms or stories of escape. It was in some of our teachers whose histories we whispered. We studied the Holocaust intensely our 8th grade year. I don’t think it was until after I graduated and went to a public high school that I realized Holocaust kid lit and YA lit was A Thing. Sometimes I cringe when looking at