Banned Books Week: Sept. 30−Oct. 6, 2012

Banned Books Week celebrates our freedom to read and draws national attention to the harms of censorship.  Listen to readers from across the country and around the world celebrate banned books at the Banned Books Virtual Read-Out.
Over the years, some of the most highly acclaimed and award winning classics in literature have been repeatedly challenged, such as, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple, Beloved, The Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Catch-22, Animal Farm, Slaughterhouse-Five, A Farewell to Arms, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Song of Solomon, and  Native Son.
This from President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Dartmouth College commencement address on June 14, 1953:

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship." 

Out of the 326 challenges reported by the American Library's Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2011, the top ten were:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
4. My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
8. What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar 
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Read a banned book today!