Another year, another Banned Books Week, and once again, I’m shocked when I peruse the titles that have been banned and/or challenged. Take a look at this list, from the American Library Association’s website. Bet you’ve read many of these books, somewhere along the road to higher knowledge. Provocative prose is guaranteed to make you think. Maybe that’s why it scares some folks.
I have to admit that the idea of banning books makes me smile. I can’t help thinking about my mom and one of her favorites sayings, “Don’t put peas up your nose.” Because of course, if you tell a little kid not to put peas up his nose (or her nose-this blog believes in equal peas for all), what’s the first thing that the kid is going to do?
Yeah, that’s right. It’s off to the doctor’s office to extract peas from a nose. So, I kinda think the best way to get kids to read the best books is to tell them that the books have been BANNED.
Oh, my gosh. Those kids will be stampeding the libraries to get to those banned books. I’d love to see kids all over America reading this list of books.
But honestly, I’m happy to see kids, teens, adults, seniors, even alien life forms, reading any book. So, read a book, any book, and celebrate your freedom.
Cathy C. Hall Writes 
I find it unbelievable that in the "21st Freakin' Century" some "Freedom-minded, communist-fearing-Americans" STILL attempt to ban books, and manage to actually get away with it some times and some places…..
Remember a few years ago there was some yahoo trying to get the Harry Potter books banned from schools? Harry Potter, for heaven's sake, the series that increased kid reading by a gazillion percent. "It glorifies the occult." That was her reasoning. Like our kids are too stupid to know HP is fiction. She could have taken the time and considerable money she spent dissing Harry, used it to pass out sandwiches to the homeless, and would have impacted more lives in a positive way. Wouldn't have gotten any press time though, eh?
I teach a senior citizen writers group, and one woman who is a religious fundamentalist believes that MY generation caused the downfall of America's morals because of our choices of books and free love atttitude. God love her! I smile at her a lot.
I would have thought this was a joke if it weren't so pathetically rediculous. So many of those books were on my kids' reading lists and I thought Kurt Vonnegut was supposed to be one of the most gifted writers of our times. Since I'm employed by a library I would never say "What illiterate souls composed this list"? When I was typing "composed" I accidentally added a "t" after the "s" — more accurate, don't you think since the list belongs in the trash heap.
Amen, sisters! But I'm heartened by the fact that many of these books are STILL on high school reading lists, proving that most of us recognize excellent literature when we see it. And celebrate it by reading every day!