Banned Books Giveaway Hop

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; the Freedom to Read Foundation; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; National Association of College Stores; People for the American Way; PEN American Center and and Project Censored.  It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

The Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop is sponsored by BookHounds and I Am A Reader. This is my 5th year participating.

Banned Book Week Giveaway Hop!

 

It's that time again. The American Library Association's annual focus on books that have been banned or challenged begins tomorrow and runs all week long. Throughout the US, people regularly challenge books in school, libraries, and bookstores, trying to deny other people the right to read and the right to choose what they read.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom receives reports from schools, libraries and other organizations and compiles them into lists. You can see the various lists of frequently challenged books here. 

Why are books challenged? Here are some statistics from the ALA's Frequently Challenged Books page:

Over this recent past decade, 5,099* challenges were reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

• 1,577 challenges due to "sexually explicit" material;
• 1,291 challenges due to "offensive language";
• 989 challenges due to materials deemed "unsuited to age group";
• 619 challenged due to "violence"' and
• 361 challenges due to "homosexuality."

Further, 274 materials were challenged due to "occult" or "Satanic" themes, an additional 291 were challenged due to their "religious viewpoint," and 119 because they were "anti-family."
Please note that the number of challenges and the number of reasons for those challenges do not match, because works are often challenged on more than one ground.

I am capable of deciding for myself what books to read or not read. I often pass on books whose theme or topic don't interest me, and occasionally, offend me in some way. 

As a teacher, part of my job is choosing books for my classrooms. I teach one, two, and three year olds so they are not reading in the strict sense but they are looking at the books, talking about them, and listening to the teachers read them. I need to consider their cognitive development, their social/emotional development, their interests, the current curriculum, my school's policy on books, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children's statement on books for young children. We have never, to my knowledge, had a parent challenge a book but we would stand behind any book in our school library. Sometimes children bring in books from home that don't meet our guidelines. In that case, we try to encourage that the book remain in their cubby but if they really want to to read it or want us to read it, we do. In the older groups, the teachers, at their discretion, can discuss with the child why we'd rather not have the book out in the room but it's handled on a case by case basis and no book is ever banned.

Obviously curating books gets trickier as children get older but I don't believe that any book should be banned from a classroom or school. The more exposure you have to people, places and events in the world, the more you learn. We learn, in part, through dissonance so bumping into ideas and concepts that make us uncomfortable is actually necessary in order to learn. Outside of a school setting I can't see any reason why someone else should have the right to determine what I read or don't read.

So, as my small contribution to the celebration of banned books, I've put up this post and I'm offering the children's book, "And Tango Makes Three". It was the fifth most challenged book in 2012, on the grounds of homosexuality and being unsuited for its intended age group. It's a book about compassion, love, and becoming a family; seems perfectly suitable to me.

The book will ship from The Book Depository so please make sure they ship to your country before entering. Please read my Giveaway Policy.

Also, this is a blog hop so be sure to visit the other blogs, read more about banned books, and see the variety of books being offered.

Blurb from goodreads ~

In the zoo there are all kinds of animal families. But Tango's family is not like any of the others. This illustrated children's book fictionalizes the true story of two male penguins who became partners and raised a penguin chick in the Central Park Zoo.

a Rafflecopter giveaway  

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Banned Books I Have Read

As I've been talking to people about banned books, several commented that they hadn't read any. When I asked them if if they had read Book X or Book D, they were surprised to discover that they had in fact read a banned book.

So, I'm posting two lists from the American Library Association, one of the top one hundred banned classics and one of the top one hundred banned or challenged books. I've marked in green which ones I've read, which weren't as many as I'd actually thought. Some I read as a kid, some in school, and some as an adult. Many I read once and some I've read some many times. My parents never censored my reading and I often talked with my mother, an English teacher, about what I was reading. They encouraged me to read anything that I wanted and didn't believe in banning books. 

Books can be challenged or banned for many reasons, but according to the ALA  common reasons include sexually explicit material, offensive language, violence, and unsuitability for age group. Those four reasons alone account for over 10,000 of the challenges initiated between 1990 and 2010. If you want to see other reasons, see what other books have been challenged or banned, which titles have been most frequently banned, see what authors have been, etc., go to the ALA and look here.

Top 100 Banned Books

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Myracle, Lauren
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris 

13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak

25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney 

30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by George Beard
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green

56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson (It's in my TBR pile)
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (I have picked this up several times but haven't gotten very far in it)
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry (I've read other books by her)
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss 

 80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine (I only read a couple)
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank

100 Banned Classics

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

6. Ulysses by James Joyce

7. Beloved by Toni Morrison

8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

9. 1984 by George Orwell

10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

17. Animal Farm by George Orwell

18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (one of my faves)
41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally (I've seen the movie but haven't read the book)
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E.M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
58.Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (I love this book so much. It was also my first book review, for my high school newspapaer)
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis 
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie  

Do You Love Your Librarian?

Do you live in the US? Does your library have the best librarian EVER?

Here's your chance to let them, and everyone else, know. The Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times and the American Library Association are sponsoring  the "I Love My Librarian Award!" They are looking for librarians who are improving the lives of the people in your school, campus or community. This year there will be up to 10 winners.

 For more information, see this article.

A Giveaway in Celebration of Banned Book Week

The American Library Association keeps track of books throughout the US that have been banned or challenged from public libraries and schools. The ALA supports freedom of speech and the right to read and battles censorship. Every year they devote a week to celebrating and promoting banned books. They help organize events and encourage libraries and book stores to have events and/or  displays involving banned books. For more information, click here.

This year Banned Book Week is Saturday September 25th through Saturday October 2nd. The ALA has a page just for BBW. My effort to encourage reading in general and support for all books will be to do giveaways. I have chosen books from the ALA's list of banned and challenged books and each day of BBW,  I will giveaway one of those books. A total of eight books will be given away, one for each day of BBW. To enter, just reply to this post.

I will be ordering the Hbooks from Book Depository so as long as you live in a country where they ship, you can enter this giveaway. Each day I will use random.org to pick the previous day's winner and post their name here on my blog. Once the winner's name is announced, they have 48 hours to contact me with their name, mailing address and the book they want. All books are paperback only. You can enter every day but only win once. If the winner fails to contact me within 48 hours, I will choose a new winner. I am not responsible for any books that are lost or damaged in shipping. Email me at baconnorsATgmailDOTcom with your info and put "BBW Giveaway" in the subject line so your email doesn't get deleted as spam.

LIST OF BOOKS FOR GIVEAWAY:  Paperback editions only

Any book from the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey

Any book from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Any book from the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman

Any book from the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

Any book from the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead

"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison

"Blood and Chocolate" by Annette Curtis Klause

"Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson

"The Call of the Wild" by Jack London

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

"The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier

"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

"The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank

"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

"Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare

"Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou 

"In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak

"Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

"My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult

"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

"Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

Banned Book Week: #SpeakLoudly and a giveaway.

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read, and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free, open access to information while drawing attention to the harm censorship causes by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Earlier today, a professor, Dr. Wesley Scroggins, spoke out in favor of banning a YA novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Here's a summary of the book:

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country.



According to Dr. Scroggins,  Speak is "filthy and immoral" and, because of it's two rape scenes, it is "soft pornography". The book's author, Anderson,  had this to say, and I completely agree:  "The fact that he sees rape as sexually exciting (pornographic) is disturbing, if not horrifying."

Then there's the debate about whether sex belongs in a book and is a book porn if it contains sex. Seleste deLaney did an interesting blog post on that a few weeks ago.

To read more of Dr. Scroggins babble, go here To read Ms. Halse Anderson's response, go here. Author Jackie Kessler has a strong, eloquent post on this topic also.


I don't believe in banning books or, with a few exceptions, censoring them. I don't like every book, news article or blog post that I've read, but that's no reason to ban them. If I like it, I spread the world. If I don't, I either ignore it, or do something about it. Today, I'm doing the latter. Spread the word, support Speak and every other book that has been banned at one time or another.

I'm also going to do what another blogger, The Pirate's Bounty, suggested and donate copies of Speak to my town library and the school library. In addition, I will do a giveaway, starting now and running through October 2nd, the end of Banned Book Week. Reply to this post stating what banned book you read, and if you liked it or not. At the end of the giveaway, I will use random.org to choose 2 winners. Each winner will receive a copy of Speak  and any book from the ALA's list of banned and challenged books, up to a cost of $10US.

Please! Spread the word; don't let the narrow-minded ignorant peoples of the world win this battle.