Friday, March 10, 2006

2006 Top Ten Banned Books

ALA (American Library Association) has announced the Top Ten Banned Books of 2005. The awards go to:
  • “It's Perfectly Normal” for homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion and being unsuited to age group;
  • “Forever” by Judy Blume for sexual content and offensive language;
  • “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger for sexual content, offensive language and being unsuited to age group;
  • “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content and offensive language;
  • “Whale Talk” by Chris Crutcher for racism and offensive language;
  • “Detour for Emmy” by Marilyn Reynolds for sexual content;
  • “What My Mother Doesn't Know” by Sonya Sones for sexual content and being unsuited to age group;
  • Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey for anti-family content, being unsuited to age group and violence;
  • “Crazy Lady!” by Jane Leslie Conly for offensive language; and
  • “It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, andFamilies” by Robie H. Harris for sex education and sexual content.

I'd love to write a long, thoughtful post on how much I hate the fact that books are banned for any reason. How I think that parents who would rather keep their children from finding out about the real world - rather than teaching them how to handle reality - should be horse whipped. How small-minded people must be to think that by keeping kids from reading about sex, homosexuality, bad language and/or violence they are doing something to be proud of. How all knowledge and ideas should be shared in order to create dialogue between people of different backgrounds, ideaologies, and beliefs. How I think that the first sign of an intrusive government is that  it tries to dictate what its citizens can and cannot read (because most of the time, it's Boards of Directors who decide that a book should be pulled from the shelves).

And how if it weren't for Judy Blume there would be at least two generations of people who probably would have learned about sex about 5 years later than they did.

1 comment:

Jaime said...

How can they ban a Judy Blume book? She's the quintessential pre-teen author. I couldn't imagine going through that time without the comfort of Ramona, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, or Superfudge. Then I found this: http://www.judyblume.com/articles/places-intro.html straight from the author herself and all about censorship. You should enjoy it. -Jaime