Celebrate Banned Books Week!

Yes, it's that time again...Banned Books Week started on September 24 and ends on October 1.

According to the American Library Association, 348 books were challenged at the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2010, and many more go unreported. Here are the 10 most challenged titles of 2010:

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, religious viewpoint, sex education, sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group

Lush, by Natasha Friend
Reasons: drugs, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group

What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint
I read this in 2004--it's been around for awhile--why all the fuss now?

Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit

Twilight (series), by Stephenie Meyer (10 Reasons I Hate Twilight)
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence, unsuited to age group
Even though I hate Twilight, it still shouldn't be banned. Really.

In honor of Banned Books Week, I'm going to read To Kill a Mockingbird (one of the most frequently banned books) and wear the Banned Books bracelet I bought a couple of years ago:



The artist I purchased this from has a necklace now, too!


  How will you celebrate Banned Books Week?

Celebrating Banned Books Week at Our House

Captain Underpants, Harry Potter series, The Color Purple, A Wrinkle in Time

Nick thinks this pretending to read Harry Potter is pretty amusing...

It's banned books week! How many of these books have you read?

Last year I celebrated banned books week by purchasing this bracelet:

How many of these banned books have you read?
(I've highlighted the ones I've read--I count 43--in purple.)

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald



The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee


The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Ulysses, by James Joyce

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

1984, by George Orwell

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway


Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad


Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne


Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Native Son, by Richard Wright

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey


Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

The World According to Garp, by John Irving

All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster


The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally


The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton

The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum


Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

My Antonia, by Willa Cather

Howards End, by E.M. Forster


In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote


Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

Jazz, by Toni Morrison

Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner

A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster


Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor

Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Orlando, by Virginia Woolf

Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Light in August, by William Faulkner

The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe

In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein

The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

White Noise, by Don DeLillo

O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

The Bostonians, by Henry James

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

The French Lieutenant's Woman, by John Fowles

Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forster

Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis

Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie

Additional banned books:
Captain Underpants series, Dav Pilkey

Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary
Harry Potter series, JK Rowling
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, Eric Carle
James & the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

Grimm's Fairy Tales

I know this list is far from comprehensive--for example, it doesn't include Huckleberry Finn or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I think I should read some more banned books--what do you think? Do you have any recommendations for me?