Banned Books Week - Top Ten Banned Books

I had grand plans to read each of the "top ten" banned books for 2011 in preparation for Banned Books Week, but as it turns out I only read one: Alice in Rapture, Sort of from the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. The series comes in at number 6 on the list. I had, however, previously read some of the other books on the list: ttfn by Lauren Myracle; The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins; and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. For a complete list see below.

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 

Alice in Rapture, Sort of
There are over 20 books in the Alice series, and I only read one of them. I think the challenges must come from some of the later books in the series, as Alice gets older in each one. Rapture takes place during the summer between sixth and seventh grades (a.k.a. "the summer of the first boyfriend") - some french kissing going on, but not much else, at least for Alice and her friends. Her brother, Lester, does have to answer to their father for "entertaining" a young woman in his (the father's) bedroom. As for "nudity" there was one scene in which a bathing suit top came off; no language that I can imagine anyone calling offensive (unless you count "heck") and some talk about "big boobs". I am not sure what the "religious viewpoint" is. One of Alice's friends, Elizabeth, is Catholic and there is some questioning about what is considered a sin and what is not.

Libraries don't play much of a role, although they are mentioned on two consecutive pages, in unrelated passages. Alice's father suggests she go to the library to learn about child care when she is hired for her first babysitting job, and Alice recalls the multitude of rules she had in elementary school including

what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess.

This book was especially fun for me to read because it takes place in Maryland (my home state). References to the Baltimore Orioles, High's Dairy stores, and Ocean City invoked some strong nostalgia in this accidental Bay Stater.

For more information about Alice see Phyllis Naylor's blog:

More Information about Frequently challenged books see the American Library Association's page

Banned Books Week September 30-October 6 2012

 Celebrating 30 years of the freedom to read, Banned Books Week starts today. This auspicious event, started by the late Judith Krug in 1982, is observed annually to bring attention to the consequences of censorship and to ensure that no one person or group can dictate what others may read. I will be posting everyday this week about censorship, banned books, and libraries. For today, take a look at my banned books websites Pam's Banned Books Week Page and Banned Books at Maxwell Library. And find out about events going on all over the country this week at http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/events.

Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Library - by Eth Clifford

Sisters Mary Rose and Jo-Beth become trapped in the Finton Memorial Library for Children during a snow storm. The telephone lines are dead, and the electricity has gone out. The library seems creepier still when they hear a myna bird asking their names, and the stuffed dolls on the "kid hack" seem to be staring at them. Eventually the two discover that there is another person in the building with them. At first scared of Miss Finton, the librarian who lives on the second floor in the converted mansion, the girls eventually decide it is safer to follow Miss Finton through the spooky building and discover what, exactly, is screaming like a banshee. And they get to send up a distress signal through an open window in the form of colorful fireworks they find in the basement - a bit more dramatic than the hand-made sign Jo-Beth creates to post in the front window : "Help! I'm a Prisoner in the liberry". The misspelling gave me a nice chuckle, since it is the same one I ended up using when creating the url for this blog (http://liberrybooks.blogspot.com/), after I discovered most other variations of "library books" were taken.

Although there are some tried and true stereotypes used to create Miss Finton's character, ultimately she is an endearing player in this fun adventure tale.

A few things for my reading list

The Librarians Gone Wild! post from "a reading life" provides some intriguing titles that I will be reading and adding to this blog over the next several months. To start, look for Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs (librarians and vampires!) in the coming weeks.

The Phantom Tollbooth - by Norton Juster

Young Milo is always bored, but by passing through a mysterious tollbooth in his toy car, he is sent on a quest to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the Sky. He is joined on his adventure by Tock the watchdog, and Humbug. The three meet a variety of other eccentric and strange characters along the way.  Finding the librarian in the book wasn't difficult, even though the word is never actually used. But what else might you call the Soundkeeper, the guardian of all noises ever made - a cataloger indeed! She tends to the vault "with long lines of file drawers and storage bins" arranged by date, and then categorized, and subcategorized alphabetically. For our hero's "Hello" is found "under G for greetings, then under M for Milo."

I watched the movie that this based on this book a few years ago. I remember it as a very groovy '70s-type journey through a magical world. As is so often the case, I very much wished I had read the book first. Having the movie images in my head seemed counter to the message of the story - to imagine, and think for yourself.

This classic in children's literature is a playful read. I loved the constant word play, and enjoyed watching Milo develop as a character.

In One Person - by John Irving

A bit of metafiction at the end of Irving's latest novel, about a bisexual writer named Bill Abbott, provides a synopsis of what Irving manages to do with this work. Here, Abbott is talking to the son of a former classmate who points out that his (Abbott's) writing makes

"all these sexual extremes seem normal....You create these characters who are so sexually 'different' as you might call them...and you expect us to sympathize with them, or feel sorry for them, or something."

"Yes, that's more or less what I do"

Irving's cast of quirky characters includes a transgender librarian, one of young Billy Abbott's first crushes and also his first sex partner. Billy's definition of sex, however, is rather Clinton-esque. He points out over and over again that what he and Miss Frost did was not what most would consider sex, as there was "no penetration". (One has to wonder about the choice of the first name of the character.)

Miss Frost, is not the only librarian in this book. The other is the unnamed librarian at Bill Abbott's boarding school, Favorite River Academy.

the academy librarian was one of Favorite River's fussy old bachelors; everyone thought that such older, unmarried males on the...faculty were what we called at the time "nonpracticing homosexuals." Who knew if they were or weren't "practicing," or if they were or were not homosexuals? All we'd observed was that they lived alone, and the way they ate and spoke - hence we imagined that they were unnaturally effeminate.

There are so many eccentric characters in this work that to examine each one would probably require a dissertation, but I do feel the need to mention Bill's cross-dressing Grandfather, and the not-so-subtle allusion made to "The Lumber Jack Song". Grandpa Harry runs a saw mill, and is pointedly called a "lumber man" in the story.

Fans of Irving's work will not be disappointed. For those who have not read any of his other novels this is as good a place as any to start.

Paloma de Palabras

This word cloud was created by Tagxedo  and represents this blog. Thanks to my husband for letting me know about it. The image was chosen in honor of my daughter.