From September 18th through September 24th is Banned Books Week, the American Library Association's celebration of the freedom to read. Some terminology from the ALA: "A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others." Censorship by the Numbers Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2021 For more information, visit ALA's Banned Books Week site.
From September 24th through September 30th is Banned Books Week, the American Library Association's celebration of the freedom to read. Banned Books Week has special significance to me because my own high school banned books while I was a student there, and this became the 1982 Supreme Court case Island Trees School District v. Pico. Did you know that books are still being banned today? According to the ALA website, "Five of the 10 titles on the Top Ten list were removed from the location where the challenge took place. On average, OIF (Office of Intellectual Freedom) finds that 10% of challenges result in the removal of the book." Some terminology from ALA: "A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice." For more information about Banned Books Week, visit ALA's website.
During my junior year at Island Trees High School, the Supreme Court argued the book banning case Island Trees School District v. Pico. That summer, when I had more free time to read, the banned books piqued my interest. What didn’t the school board want me to learn? I borrowed Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas’s memoir about growing up on the streets of Spanish Harlem, from the local library. I copied many of the passages that rang true into my high school journal. The worlds of home and school were made up of rules laid down by adults who had forgotten the feeling of what it means to be a kid but expected a kid to remember to be an adult --something he hadn’t gotten to yet.” The scenes that initially caused Down These Mean Streets to be banned weren’t among the many paragraphs that I transcribed. It was the honesty and power of Thomas’s language as he struggled to find his place in the world that made the greatest impact on me. In response to the number of books being challenged in the United States, 1982 was also the year Banned Books Week began. Unfortunately, challenging and banning books still goes on today. In a July 2014 case, one Delaware high school eliminated the entire 9th grade summer reading list because of a challenge to one of the books included. For more information about this and other recent instances of book banning, visit the Banned Books Week site, created by the American Library Association.
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