Friday, September 23, 2022

Fast Five Fiction: Banned Books Week

It's Friday and time for Fast Five Fiction! Each week I share five fiction books: new books, notable books, books around a common theme. All this week at the library we've been celebrating Banned Book Week so today I've got five of my favorite banned books.

Since it was founded in 1982, Banned Books Week has highlighted the value of free and open access to information by drawing attention to the attempts to remove books and other materials from libraries, schools, and bookstores. It spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools. By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.

Banned book lists can be a great resource for parents looking for books that teach kids about the world and themselves. When your children read books that have been challenged or banned, you have a double opportunity as a parent; you can discuss the books themselves, and the information they provide, and you can also talk about why people might find them troubling. Here are a few books that are often challenged, yet present great opportunities for children to learn. 




Click the title to be directed to the book in our catalog. 



A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Since its publication in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time has been challenged and sometimes even banned by various groups and individuals almost every year. Some protest that the book is too Christian, while others believe that it undermines Christian doctrines by presenting alternative views of good and evil.



Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia has the dubious distinction of being one of the most frequently banned and/or challenged books in the United States. Although Bridge To Terabithia has been introduced, read and studied in many schools, it has still been challenged by parents and school boards. There were questions concerning the use of “Lord”, suggestions of witchcraft, and the encouragement of elaborate fantasy worlds which could “lead to confusion”.




The book as a whole can very dark and mysterious, James and the Giant Peach was banned because it had references to alcohol, drugs, violence, and suspicious behavior. In one case, it was banned from a town in Wisconsin as the spider licking its lips, was seen as being sexual.



J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has been translated into 68 different languages, distributed in over 200 different territories worldwide, and has sold over 450 million copies at last count. And the number of challenges and bans on this series, usually for depicting witchcraft and wizardry and promoting anti-family themes, is also impressive. By 2000, it had been challenged about 650 different times. 

This book tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm populated by grotesque figures like talking playing cards and anthropomorphic creatures. The Wonderland described in the tale plays with logic in ways that have made the story of lasting popularity with adults as well as children. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was originally banned in China and other parts of the world because some people objected to the animal characters being able to use human language. They felt this put animals on the same level as humans.

*To learn more about how censorship is a dead end, visit these websites:

Happy Friday, and happy reading!

No comments:

Post a Comment