This week we celebrate banned books, and yes even though it is 2018 we are still banning books. Every year the ALA office for Intellectual Freedom records several hundred attempts by groups and individual people, to have books removed from libraries and schools. According to the office of Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing course Top 100 novels of the 20th century have been the target of ban attempts.
Books like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has been challenged by the Baptist College in Charleston, SC (1987) because of sexual and language references in the book. The Catcher and the Rye has been a target of censors since 1960 all the way to 2009 because of sex, violence, and profanity.
We have Banned Books Week, to help encourage our first amendment right, and our right to feed our intellectual need. Not all the books on the list are banned, but they are challenged which means they have called it to be removed or restricted based on it's content, but when the book is banned, the books are removed from schools and libraries, but then some of these books do no go unchallenged, it may take some time but the books do find their way back into some schools and libraries.
The ALA has reported over 6,000 book challenges between the years 1990 and 2000; with concerned parents often are the sources. Most of the time books are challenged because of the contents such as witchcraft and the occult, sex and profanity, and since there are many books out there that have trigger warnings because of the content, like rape and drug abuse. Parents have the right to decide if they want their children to read such content.
People may not realize that libraries serve as the community information center, where people can get free resource information and check out books, and yes some people can just go to the bookstore and buy the book if it has been banned from the library. But not everyone can go spend $25 on a new book and or find one that has been discontinued. This is why we have libraries so people can go and have the freedom to read what they want.
The reason why we still have Banned Books week, we have the right to read, learn and discover. For example, Harry Potter has been challenged since it came out in the US in 1999 but was not challenged because it had sex or inappropriate language, but because they said it glorified magic and the occult, groups in New Mexico burnt the book and it has been challenged in 19 states. I live in a world of books, I remember reading books like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, these kinds of books spark your imagination, I remember building a fort and thinking it was Hogwarts, making a cardboard sword and battling Sauron and heading off on a great adventure with Hobbits. Books help us escape when we have no other place to go, to run off to far away places like Neverland and fly with Peter Pan and Tinker Bell.
So I encourage you to celebrate Banned Books Week, pick up a book off the list, maybe it's something you have never read but are curious about, or its one of your favorites and you want to reread it. Just make sure you are feeding your intellectual need.
