Banned Book Week

This is the week to celebrate your freedom to read what you want, when you want!
Begun in 1982 by Judith Krug (a free-speech advocate), this annual worldwide event is about banned and challenged books and the persecution of the writers of these works. Banned Book Week is when bookstores, libraries and schools are challenged to not suppress writers and publishers of alternative materials, and allow free speech. Some universities and schools sponsor read-outs where people can freely read passages from banned books aloud.

Here is a link to an amazing list on Wikipedia of banned books worldwide:
http://http://en.wik..._by_governments

And yet there is opposition to the Banned Books Week, of course! From the conservatives, the same crowd who love to ban and burn books that offend their narrowly focused ideals.

The so-called "Focus on the Family" conservative group in the USA has an outraged spokeswoman named Candi Cushman. In her role as "education analyst," she said that "parents have every right and responsibility to object to their kids receiving...literature without their permission, especially in a school setting."

However we have the ALA on our side. The American Association of Libraries and the events week itself "highlights the benefits of free access to information and the perils of censorship by spotlighting the actual or attempted banning of books."

Every year the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) creates a Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books.

The OIF collects reports on book challenges from librarians, teachers, concerned individuals and press reports. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness. In 2013, the OIF received hundreds of reports on attempts to remove or restrict materials from school curricula and library bookshelves.

The most challenged books of the year were: 1. “Captain Underpants” (series), by Dav Pilkey; 2. “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison; 3. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie; 4. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E.L. James; 5. “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins; 6. “A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl,” by Tanya Lee Stone; 7. “Looking for Alaska,” by John Green; 8. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky; 9. “Bless Me Ultima,” by Rudolfo Anaya; and 10. “Bone” (series), by Jeff Smith.

You can read the entire American Libraries report for 2014 here:
http://http://en.wik..._by_governments

Whether it is printed on paper, in your tablet or some cloud, information is knowledge. Knowledge frees us from slavery and enables us to advance as a species.

Celebrate reading and enjoy your life, read something!



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I have a 1966 first English edition of Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, (The little Red Book), published in Peking.

This book was brought out of China in 1966 by my father in law, who was a visiting surgeon at the time.
It has a printing error and correction insert and is supposedly very rare. I found one copy on the net selling for $350.00.

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Never read it.

 

Flowers for Algernon? Really? Have to wonder why... it was a good read.

 

Half the books I wrote reports about in middle and high school had been banned/censored somewhere, including my own school. I had to get permission to check out those books. From two teachers, my parents and an administrator.
I had to pitch the very homework I'd been assigned. Partially for reading level concerns, but also content concerns.

 

Ahhh, memories.

So glad I am not living the life in Fahrenheit 451, stumbling about, cold, in the forest, repeating lines from just one classic tome over and over again as if a mantra, endlessly, cheerlessly...

I read at least one book per week, would like to do more.

Kindle books that is... I hate dusty old moldy paperbacks that make me sneeze And huge heavy hard covers of importance... they say it's all in the feel, but my arms feel dead holding twenty pounds of paper and ink.

And then along came the $25 RCA tablet device to read Kindle books, and anything else I can cram into it.

 

But then again maybe I am now radioactive!

 

I wonder why, his stuff is harmless as far as I knew.

 

Six books are not being published anymore becasue of racist and insensitive images.
They are “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

It must be remembered that Theodor Geisel would be 117 years old today and his work is a product of his time. He didn't just write children's books but was also an illustrator, cartoonist, and animator.

Here's two advertisements for FLIT insecticide.

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