Pulled this from Harriet's blog - I always feel somehow derelict that I haven't read more banned books.
As I will be spending the afternoon working in the library, here is a meme in honor of the end of Banned Books Week. According to the American Library Association, this is the list of the 100 most frequently banned and/or challenged books for 1990-2000. The instructions are easy: bold the ones you’ve read (it doesn’t have to be recently – a lot of these are children’s books) and pass the meme along. If you are reading, TAG – you’re it.
Heather has Two Mommies is actually a very beautiful book.
Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I think English profs keep assigning this book solely because it is so often banned...
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice(Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boyby Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughtersby Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Why on earth would this book be banned?
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sonsby Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shortsby Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What?by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Again, another English teacher book...
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Again, eh? How is Waldo ban-worthy?
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Here’s the list of the 10 most banned/challenged books for 2007:
And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
TTYL,by Lauren Myracle
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
6 comments:
Having just celebrated "Banned Boooks Week" here at the library, I am more thankful than ever that we still have the freedom to choose and the freedom to express our opinions (even if those opinions are considered unorthodox or unpopular) to all who wish to read them.
Thanks for posting this. As one who works in a library, I am all too aware of the efforts of a few to ban books on our shelves because they somehow find them offensive or whatever.
Oh, and by the way, what happened to the blog "A Place in the Hills"? It seems to have disappeared very suddenly, and I was quite enjoying reading it and corresponding with John. Its absence saddens me deeply because I felt a certain kinship with him being of Welsh descent myself!
As an ex-librarian, there isn't a ingle one of those titles which I would have banned, though I might have had the odd complaint about a few of them.
The Blog, Sally. Well, basically its been discovered by an individual living in the village who would use it to create trouble. So I've taken it down for now. I'll be back, maybe tomorrow,or in the next few days, with a new blog, probably with a rather less specific local connection.
Since no one's explained why some of these books get banned, I guess no one who wants to ban books reads your blog, and we're all just standing around shaking our heads in baffled silence.
Books that are considered sexually explicit, have offensive language, and are considered unsuited to an age group (in that order) are usually candidates for banning by certain narrow-minded individuals or groups who want to control what other people read.
Thank goodness books aren't banned much today (except in Podunk, USA) as they are challenged. Here is the ALA website that explains why celebrating our freedom to read whatever we choose is so important http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/backgroundb/background.cfm#wtdbbc.
In my 20+ years in the library field, I have never banned or been asked to ban a book. Items in our collection have been challenged but none of those challenges have ever been successful. My opinion is - as with most everything else in life: if you don't want to read it, then don't check it out.
Just my 2 cents.
Where's Waldo has been banned because people object to the behavior of some of the hundreds of characters in the pictures. In one famous case, there is a woman sunbathing topless in one of pictures of Waldo at the beach.
It creates the mental image of the censor poring with his magnifying glass over every page of Waldo, seeking the evil message he just knows must be there...
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