What did you read?

Last week ALA (and librarians around the country) celebrated the Freedom to Read. Did you go find a challenged book to see what all the fuss was about?

I used to show students Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (PZ7 .S8177 SY 1980) by William Steig as an example of a challenged book. One does need to be aware of the cultural sensitivities when a book was published to begin to understand why someone would challenge it. Sylvester was originally published in 1969. Mr. Steig used animals as the characters. The family were donkeys. Neighbors were pigs, cats, and dogs. The police were pigs - friendly looking but still in the animal form of pigs. And yes, the late sixties, portraying the police as pigs was inflammatory to some. I personally doubt Mr. Steig had that in mind.

We are truly blessed in the access we have to information in multiple formats (print and electronic) and multiple places that we can go to get the information (internet, libraries, and bookstores).

Read often- for fun and for enlightenment!