Trying to Understand Banned Book Week

Am a few weeks out with this blog about Banned Book Week, but as an sterotype ill-informed Brit, you can’t exactly blame me for this. I was chatting about this on a podcast I was guest host on (Twilighters Anonymous – thanks for having me on, guys!), so as we chatted about this, I decided that I need to know more about this subject, so I Googled...

In USA (don’t believe Canada has this [we don’t have this in the UK], but I might be wrong), the last week of September is known as Banned Book Week. This week is a celebration of books that people have tried (and, mostly, failed) to ban from libraries, classrooms, states. But there were people who fought to keep these books available. Just trying to get the book banned for fear that the book's content.

According to figures on the from the American Libraries Association (or the ALA) website (link below), there drew up a list of figures that made quite interesting reading. According to their website, there has been 3,376 challenges made in 2008.

-1,225 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material;
-1,008 challenges due to “offensive language”;
-720 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”;
-458 challenges due to “violence”
-269 challenges due to “homosexuality”
-103 challenges due to the material deemed “anti-family”
-And 233 challenges due to “religious viewpoints”

Of these challenges, 1,176 of them (approximately 31%) were in classrooms; 37% were in school libraries; 24% (909 challenges) took place in public libraries. There were less than 75 challenges to college classes; and only 36 to academic libraries. There are isolated cases of challenges to materials made available in or by prisons, special libraries, community groups, and student groups. The majority of challenges were initiated by parents (almost exactly 51%), while patrons and administrators followed behind (10% and 8% respectively).

While trying to understand this (my view of this is that no book should ever be banned), I discovered a list of the popular books to be banned or censored over the past few year and classic novels that some people have tried to banned and, in some cases, have managed to ban within their state or school or whatnot:

Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (BANNED)
Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (isn’t this taught in American Schools? Pointless to ban something if it’s for education)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1984 by George Orwell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame


For More Information, go to: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm