Banned Book Week: Sept 27-Oct 3

Come to the Williams Library to see the display of
Banned Books and Suppressed Literature

Each September the American Library Association highlights books that people have tried to ban from public and school libraries. Banned Book Week also highlights information freedom, which most US citizen hold dear. Higher education institutions are usually insulated from the continual battle among libraries, schools, and book challengers. Challengers are individuals from various backgrounds who object to the availability of certain library books/materials to children (17 years old or younger) or to their communities. People have the right to challenge materials in any library, and the library board or school board review the request based on its policy. Below are a few examples (more examples) of challenges in 2008/2009 compiled by ALA’s American Libraries magazine.

• Title/Author: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  Reason: A Cherry Hill, NJ resident had objected to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression. The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it.
  Status: Retained in the English curriculum

• Title/Author: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  Reason: An individual in North Stafford, Va. challenged the use of Zinn’s book in a high school advanced-placement history class (2009), even though it’s not the primary textbook because the book is “un-American, leftist propaganda.” Students in the advanced placement class also read an article titled, “Howard Zinn’s Disappointing History of the United States,” which criticizes Zinn’s book.
  Status: Challenged

• Title/Author: Twilight Series by Stephenie H. Meyer
  Reason: In the middle school libraries of the Capistrano, Calif. Unified School District (2008). The books were initially ordered removed by the district’s instructional materials specialist, who ordered that the books be moved from middle school to high school collections. That order was rescinded and the books remain in the middle school libraries.
  Status: Removed from and later reinstated

• Title/Author: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wiched Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  The book was retained in the tenth-grade honors program of the Canandaigua Academy in Ontario County, N.Y. (2008) despite concerns about the sexual content on a few pages of the book. The district will offer alternative reading for anyone who objects to the book.
  Status: Retained

• Title/Author: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part‑Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  Book was suspended from a Crook County High School classroom in Prineville, Oreg. (2008) after a parent complained it was offensive. The New York Times best seller and a National Book Award winner will remain out of the classroom until the school district can revamp its policies. The book is about a boy growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend an all‑white school. The protagonist in Alexie’s book discusses masturbation.
  Status: Suspended

• Title/Author: The Starplace by Vicki Grove
  The book was challenged at the Turner Elementary School in New Tampa, Fla. (2008) because the novel contains a racial epithet. The book about an interracial middleschool friendship in 1960s Oklahoma was highly recommended by Children’s Literature Review.
  Status: Challenged

*Photo by flickr user florian.b under a creative commons license