From Huck Finn to Harry Potter: Banned Book Week

Each year at the end of September, Banned Book Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to read and emphasizes the importance of free and open-access to information. The books that make the list have been subjected to possible banning within the United States. However, due to librarians, teachers, and book sellers, in most cases these titles have not been banned.

In this day and age even if a book is removed from the shelves in a school library, there is a high chance you would be able to find this material in a bookstore or public library. Perhaps over the years there has been a hype made around Banned Book Week, which overshadows how challenging books decades ago, may have impacted availability of the title. For example, the Online Books Page notes that Ulysses by James Joyce was banned from the United States as obscene for fifteen years until 1933. The book was seized by U.S Postal Authorities during that time. However, perhaps this hype around BBW helps prevent banning and censorship by allowing people to acknowledge that books are still challenged today.

The top ten challenged books in the United States for 2010 were:

1) And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
3) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
4) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
5) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins;
6) Lush, by Natasha Friend
7) What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
8) Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
9) Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
10) Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

For more information about Banned Book Week and why these and other titles continue to be challenged, please visit the ALA website.
For other general information on banned books visit The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania.


-BCO