• Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

     

     

    "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
     
    ~Mark Twain
    (letter to Mrs. F. G. Whitmore February 7, 1907)
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    Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Each year Banned Books Week is held during the last week of September, and it highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.  The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings.  Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.  Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society  (adapted from ALA Banned Books Week Website).
     
     

     

    Banning vs. a Challenge
     
    A Challenge:  an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.  Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others (ALA). 
     
    Each year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.  According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts (ALA).
     
     
    List of Banned or Challenged Classics 
     
    The number next to the text indicates its ranking on the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list.
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    1. Ulysses, by James Joyce
    2. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
    4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
    5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
    6. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
    8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
    9. 1984, by George Orwell
    10. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
    11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
    12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
    15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
    16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
    17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
    18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
    19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
    20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
    23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
    24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
    25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
    26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
    27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
    28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
    29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
    30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
    33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
    36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
    38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
    40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
    45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
    48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
    49. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence 
    49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
    50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
    52.  Portnoy's Complaint, by Philp Roth
    53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
    55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
    57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
    64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
    65. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
    66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
    67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
    73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
    74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
    80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
    84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
    88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
    97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike