More about Banned Book Week

I spent the day helping our fair citizens excercise their First Amendment rights, right up until closing time. Then I had supper around 9 and I am ready for a hot bath. Before you say, “this sounds like a Facebook update not a blog,” let me share a link with you. Tom Lehrer  “The most amusing song about Roth v. U.S., 354 U.S. 476 (1957) I’ve ever heard.” …anonymous Youtube reviewer.

 Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this song are those of the composer and singer and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of wildflowersp.

I campaigned for the right to make a display for Banned Book Week. Here are some photos. My vision was to fill the bookshelves entirely with books which had been banned. I didn’t quite accomplish that, but it does look pretty cool. I fished books out of donations for our upcoming book sale to supplement books on loan from staff. I won’t tell you how many of them are my personal books…

The whole thing.

 

The left side.

Sorry about the reflections.

 

Librarians: the original search engines

The First Amendment is a cause close to my heart. Banned book week this year is Sep 24-Oct 1.

The first time I really thought about censorship was when I heard the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie- the author of The Satanic Verses (a very cool link). I was in high school at the time. He wanted to kill a guy for writing a book he didn’t like. While I was harboring my own thoughts along that line concerning Nathaniel Hawthorne, the loss of The House of the Seven Gables was hardly worth the loss of The Scarlet Letter.

Why are books banned?  Profanity, sexual references, racism and religion are the main reasons children’s books are challenged in the US.

The following children’s books have been challenged in the US since 1980: Ask yourself why.

• Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Where’s Waldo by Martin Hanford
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
• The Egypt Game by Zilpha Snyder
• Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.
• Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Billygoats Gruff Traditional Fairy Tales

 

Tune in for more tomorrow