Banned Book Week
For those of you on campus, you may have noticed some of your teachers or staff members wearing "I read banned books" buttons or you may have seen the bulletin boards in Barber Hall and the Library. To let all of you know what this is about... this week, the Library is celebrating Banned Book Week. For the 27th annual Banned Book Week, September 29 - October 6, 2007, libraries and bookstores across the U.S. are celebrating a democratic society's most basic freedom -- the freedom to read. As part of this celebration, we honor that freedom by acknowledging both the books and the authors who had the brilliance to write them. Banned Book week "celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met." (taken from the ALA)
Some interesting bits about banned books:
* each year the Office of Intellectual Freedom receives hundreds of reports filed asking that books be removed from Library shelves.
* In 2006, the OIF received over 500 attempts to have books removed.
*Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman's famous collection of poetry, was withdrawn in Boston in 1881, after the District Attorney threatened criminal prosecution for the use of explicit language in some poems.
*D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was the object of numerous obscenity trials in both the UK and the United States up into the 1960s.
*The Savannah Morning News reported in November 1999 that a teacher at the Windsor Forest High School required seniors to obtain permission slips before they could read Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear.
*Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was banned for its depiction of the behavior of Scarlett O'Hara and the freed slaves in the novel.
For more stories click here.
Top recently challenged or banned books of 2008
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Joy of gay sex by Charles Silverstein
Of mice and men by John Steinbeck
The bluest eye by Toni Morrison
The giver by Lois Lowry
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Native son by Richard Wright
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A girl's life online by Katherin Tarbox
Angus, Thongs and full-frontal snogging: confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Alice on her way by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The freedom writers diary by Freedom Writers
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
The lovely bones by Alice Sebold
Go ask Alice by Anonymous
To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
Give a boy a gun by Todd Strasser
And many more...
Many of these books are available in the Library and we would be delighted to get any that you may want to read in. Please, let us know. We also have the movie version of many of these available on DVD.
In essence, BBW in the Library is about our celebrating and enforcing your right to read, learn, think, and find out about whatever you want. Come up and check out some of these or any other books. See you soon.
Some interesting bits about banned books:
* each year the Office of Intellectual Freedom receives hundreds of reports filed asking that books be removed from Library shelves.
* In 2006, the OIF received over 500 attempts to have books removed.
*Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman's famous collection of poetry, was withdrawn in Boston in 1881, after the District Attorney threatened criminal prosecution for the use of explicit language in some poems.
*D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was the object of numerous obscenity trials in both the UK and the United States up into the 1960s.
*The Savannah Morning News reported in November 1999 that a teacher at the Windsor Forest High School required seniors to obtain permission slips before they could read Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear.
*Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was banned for its depiction of the behavior of Scarlett O'Hara and the freed slaves in the novel.
For more stories click here.
Top recently challenged or banned books of 2008
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Joy of gay sex by Charles Silverstein
Of mice and men by John Steinbeck
The bluest eye by Toni Morrison
The giver by Lois Lowry
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Native son by Richard Wright
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A girl's life online by Katherin Tarbox
Angus, Thongs and full-frontal snogging: confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Alice on her way by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The freedom writers diary by Freedom Writers
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
The lovely bones by Alice Sebold
Go ask Alice by Anonymous
To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
Give a boy a gun by Todd Strasser
And many more...
Many of these books are available in the Library and we would be delighted to get any that you may want to read in. Please, let us know. We also have the movie version of many of these available on DVD.
In essence, BBW in the Library is about our celebrating and enforcing your right to read, learn, think, and find out about whatever you want. Come up and check out some of these or any other books. See you soon.
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