Banned Books Week 2012

For the past thirty years, at the end of September, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom holds Banned Book Week celebrating the freedom to read. Banned Book Week is an opportunity to bring communities together: librarians, publishers, journalists, teachers and readers of all kinds, and remember the importance of the freedom to seek and express ideas, even those some consider unpopular.

A new list is compiled featuring the most challenged books each year. The 10 most challenged titles of 2011 were:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
   Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
   Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence
4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
   Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
   Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
   Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
   Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
   Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
    Reasons: offensive language; racism

Throughout this week, the Cedar Rapids Public Library will celebrate Banned Books Week with a series of posts from library staff on their favorite banned book. Also, visit the Library this week and discover the variety of challenged books on our display, check one out, and rip into it. Let us know what your favorite banned or challenged book is and why you think it’s an important discussion to have with each other.

For more information on Banned Books Week, visit http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/.