Tag Archives: BBW

Banned Books Week: Before Books Get on the Shelf

Posted on by
Reply

Graphics from ALA

In February of 2009, Debra Lua Whelan published an article in SLJ about self censorship by librarians: “A Dirty Little Secret.” It’s a must read for librarians for sure, but also for anyone in the publishing business. In conjunction, SLJ surveyed it’s “Extra Helpings” readers about self-censorship. The results are shocking. Here are a few of the lowlights:

  • 70% said possible reaction from parents kept them from buying a book.
  • 87% said sexual content has kept them from buying a book.
  • 47% said homosexuality has.

Statistics like this make me reflect upon my own choices. While I pride myself on buying books about hunting and the military when I myself am an aquavorian pacifist, I do have my touch points, namely misogyny in general and violence against women in particular.

Case in point: more than one (male) student has asked if we have Tucker Max’s I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell. We do not. I can hide behind my collection development policy here: the only professional review I could find came from a humor roundup in Booklist which called it “foul and misogynistic.” On the other hand, The Gossip Girl books aren’t exactly burning up with positive reviews and I have those. Picked up secondhand usually, but still they are on my shelves.

So is this self-censorship or collection development? Am I letting what offends me get in the way of my decisions? After all, it seems inconsistent of me to chastise people for wanting to keep what they feel is offensive off the shelves, while I won’t purchase certain books that rile me. Librarians, have you ever kept something off the shelf because you disagree with its content or because you fear a challenge?

Banned Books Week: Things Books Make us Do

Posted on by
Reply

Graphics from ALA

Whenever the topic of book banning comes up, someone invariably makes the argument that banning books is silly because books can’t make us do anything. Reading Harry Potter goes the argument will not turn a child into a wizard. True, but you’ve got to know that thousands of children wanted to be wizards after reading those books.

Of course books are a safe place to work through emotions and experiences without having to go through them ourselves. But arguing that books don’t change us seems like an argument against books rather than for them.

So, in that spirit, here are some things that I did (and do) because I was influenced by books I read as a child:

  • I started addressing my journal to Kitty after reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Later, after I lost a friend, I began addressing my journal to him, which is where, in turn, I got the idea of having Dara address her journal to Rachel as a child in Secrets.
  • I make little “x”s on my bug bites. I think I read this in one of the Soup books by Robert Newton Peck, though it might have been another book I read around that time.
  • I played in a magical land in the woods near my house, just like the kids did in The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson.
  • I joined the Peace Corps after reading Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One. I really wanted to go to South Africa, where the book was set, but I was stationed in Cote d’Ivoire instead. It didn’t work out quite as planned, but that’s a story for another day.

Those are the just the first ones that come to mind. I would love to know how others were influenced by the books they read as kids. Please share in the comments.

Banned Books Week: Debs Speak Loudly

Posted on by
Reply

Graphics from ALA

Last week I blogged about Wesley Scroggins editorial in which he called for the removal of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, “a book called Slaughterhouse Five” (’cause, yanno, you might not have heard of this Kurt Vonnegut guy) and Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer from the schools and curriculum in his local schools. An editor’s note reported that superintendent of the Republic said that Twenty Boy Summer was under review, while Slaughterhouse Five had been removed from the curriculum.

I explained in my previous post why I think Ockler’s book is so amazing. Scroggins at best grossly misinterpreted it and, at worst, is purposefully misrepresenting it. Either way, we fellow Debs took this attack personally. But, organized by Saundra Mitchell, we are taking the high ground and we’re giving readers a chance to decide for themselves what they think about Sarah’s book. Debs Speak Loudly is a chance for you to win one of 100 copies of Twenty Boy Summer donated by us and Sarah’s publisher, Little Brown. So head over to the post and leave a comment — it’s as easy as that to enter!

Banned Books Week: They don’t ban books anymore do they?

Posted on by
Reply

Graphics from ALA

So, this week is Banned Books Week, which, according to the ALA’s website:

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week 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.

Each year I celebrate BBW in my library. My favorite thing to do is to put paper covers over the books and write why they were banned on them. Inevitably, writing “Sexual content” or “Violence” or “explicit homosexual and heterosexual situations, profanity, underage drinking and smoking, extreme  moral shortcomings, child molesters, graphic pedophile situations and total lack of negative consequences throughout the book” makes teens pick them up. (That last one is for Augusten Burroughs Running with Scissors. Here’s the complete annotated list: Books Challenged and/or Banned – 2009-2010 (PDF))

My students often ask, “This was banned here?” and I explain that no, it was not banned in our school or library, but someone attempted to remove it from a school or library elsewhere. When they see books that they love and books that they are asked to read for school banned, it really makes them think.

Two things I probably don’t stress enough is that, although it is called Banned Books Week, in the United States it’s usually more about challenges. As the ALA site points out:

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.

However, book bannings do still happen in other countries, as well as the imprisonment of authors whose views don’t match those of their governments. The PEN’s Freedom to Write offers great information about how you can fight the silencing of writers worldwide.