Every September in the United States we have Banned Books week, this is a week for national awareness towards censorship and banned or challenged books. Since 1982, more than 11,000 books have been challenged from the classics we all grew up reading and loving like The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, Catcher and the Rye and ironically enough, Fahrenheit 451; to more recent books like Twilight and The Hunger Games. Books are challenged for a number of reasons including racial issues, sexual situations, profanity, religious differences or controversial matters like abortion and the list could go on forever.
Throughout this week, many schools, libraries, bookstores and blogs will do events to promote our First Amendment and the strength literature can bring to people. So make sure you check out your local area to see if anything is going on that you can attend this week.
Where do you stand? Do you believe that schools have a right to keep their students from reading certain things?
I can see how that’s a hard subject. We all want to protect our children and not expose them to the real world too early. But as children, that’s also how we grow up: we read, we learn, we develop who we are with our own unique personalities. So when you take away books due to not agreeing with something that’s in them, aren’t you basically telling them what to think without giving them a chance to make up their own minds and form their own opinions on a subject? How can we encourage problem solving minds like that?
Well, that’s just a little tidbit from me... What are your opinions on the subject?
To find out more information about Banned Books Week you can visit bannedbooksweek.org and ala.org.
-J
-J
3 comments:
I feel that banning books from a library is horrible. Even a school library. If parents feel that they don't want their kids reading a certain book then it's their responsibility to enforce that. Not all parents want to limit the reading choices of their children. It's not right for a library to limit the choices of all children because of the opinions of a few parents.
I completely agree with you BookGirl. I think you put that very well.
Thank you for your comment!
-J
Banning books is just plain wrong! People can choose not to read a book if they don't believe in the subject matter or choose not to read it to their child for the same reason. But to ban them? NO! I think banning a book actually brings more attention to the book rather then leaving it alone and letting people choose for themselves how they feel about it or if they even want to read it. No to Banning books!
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