Image by DML East Branch via FlickrWhen was the last time you read a banned or challenged book?Pretty recently, probably. If you read SPEAK by Laurie Halse-Anderson this summer in the UB program (or if you read it for school), you read a book that's currently being challenged in Missouri. Those of you who've read it, what do you think? Is it "a novel about a girl dealing with the aftermath of rape"? Or is it, as Wesley Scroggins says, "soft pornography" and should therefore be banned from high school libraries?
You can read Laurie Halse-Anderson's own thoughts on this challenge to her book. Feel free to leave a comment on her blog, or follow her on Twitter!
Want to see which other books have been banned or challenged? You can check out 2009's top ten most challenged books here. Or you can see the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books of 2000-2009 here.
Some of my favorites from the Top 100:
- The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
- His Dark Materials series (Philip Pullman)
- Go Ask Alice (Anonymous)
- The Giver (Lois Lowry)
- The Face on the Milk Carton (Caroline B. Cooney)
- Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (Louise Rennison)
- Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
- Whale Talk (Chris Crutcher)
- Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
- The Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Paterson)
- Speak (Laurie Halse-Anderson)
- A Time to Kill (John Grisham)
- Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
- Junie B. Jones series (Barbara Park)
- The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
- The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
- The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende)
- Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)
Thanks to this list, I have a bunch of books to add to my "To Be Read" pile!
How are you going to celebrate Banned Books Week?
