Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!

For those in the dark, it is Banned Books Week in our fair nation. This is the time to recognize the many challenges brought forth in an attempt to remove books from school and public libraries. We have a display in the media center highlighting just some of the many wonderful books that have been challenged or banned over the years. Our 8th Humanities class is about to begin the book at the very top of the current list - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 

It has been fun watching student reaction to the display. Cries of astonishment and dismay are the norm. Some of the more heated conversations revolve around: 

Charlotte's Web and Winnie-the-Pooh (talking animals are blasphemous)
The Night Kitchen (nudity, sexually provocative)
The Diary of Anne Frank (too depressing)

Another challenged book, The House on Mango Street, is one that our Humanities students have read. It was carted out of a high school in Arizona after officials banned Mexican-American studies. Sound familiar? This was also when "our" poem, In Lak'ech was banned. Ironically - or not really - course offerings in Mexican-American studies have exploded in that area. This is the same effect that banned/challenged books have. 

See this article for more recent controversies (note: things to read ASAP).