Yesterday started the American Library Association’s Banned Books week. That’s right: librarians across the U.S. are celebrating banned books! Or rather, they’re celebrating the Freedom to Read.
People have all sorts of reasons they want books banned from libraries: everything from religious differences (or veiled accusations, which circle back to religious differences) to appropriateness for small children to downright pet peeves. The beautiful thing about libraries, though, is if you don’t want to read something, don’t check it out. There! Done.
I wrote out a whole diatribe on how if banning books were really a logical thing to do, the first one I’d ban would be the Bible: graphic, violent, sexist: need I go on? And then I deleted my rant. Aside from preaching to the choir (of bibliophiles, not to mention a couple of people who derive inspiration and comfort from the Bible), I believe in teaching through action. So instead, I wrote a review of a banned book and posted it to my favorite review site, loveandbooks.com. You can find my review there. And I encourage you to read a banned book (might I recommend Fahrenheit 451? Captain Underpants? Twilight? Or any of the Harry Potter series?) and write your own review.
Power to the people! Through books.
All the books.
Special thanks to the ALA for providing the image.
OMG is that this week?!
…I have just banned a book from my library, and I’m quite proud to have done so. It’s a completely biased non-fiction account of how awesome the kids were who joined the Nazi party. Without the direct instruction from someone who can explain that it’s written in a biased manner, I find it inappropriate in a school library. So it now lives in my office, in case I ever need to teach a class on biasness.
Do you think that discussion/lesson will ever come up?