Banned Books Week 09

Welcome to banned books week! It seems incredible to many of us that there would still be people trying to ban books in the year 2009, but it actually happens all the time. In the past seven years, more than 3700 book challenges were reported to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. It is believed that this represents a small portion of those books actually challenged since not all institutions report such events to the ALA.

The single greatest reason for such challenges was concern over sexually explicit material. Other challenges occurred because of offensive language, violence, or homosexuality. At least 200 books were challenged over a "religious viewpoint." Some of the frequently challenged authors were:

-Phillip Pullman
-J.K. Rowling
-Chris Crutcher
-John Steinbeck
-Katherine Paterson
-Walter Dean Meyers
-Mark Twain
-Maya Angelou
-Toni Morrison

Of course whenever I hear about a book challenge, it always makes me want to go out and read the book in question. I hope this kind of list causes these authors to do better, and not worse, on their quarterly earnings reports. Therefore, go out and buy a challenged book today! More info about Banned Books Week may be found here at the ALA.