Sometimes, these days, it’s better to laugh than cry. You know: when life gives you lemons, chug some lemonade. The lemonade in the banned book scenario is a brand new reading list: created for us by those who would restrict what we’d read. Thankfully, it doesn’t work that way. Not sure what to read this week? Choose one of these. And we can make light (back to that laugh so you don’t cry scenario) but […]
Over the past 90 days, there has been an increase in searches for “banned books,” “banned book list,” and “list of banned books.” These types of searches have also increased over the last year. Trending book titles include The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The interest in banned books can reflect the current political climate and increased censorship in America’s public […]
If art stirs the heart enough to make some people afraid, it is art deserving of our attention. This simple thought has come up for me again and again over the last few weeks as I surfed through this latest — and ugliest — wave of book banning and burning in America. Not everyone agrees with me. For instance, experts have some pretty strong ideas about why it’s happening now. From the New York Times: […]
We love Banned Books Week! Celebrated in September of each year, if nothing else, it gives us some terrific ideas about what to read next. This year Banned Books Week runs from September 22 to 28. It celebrates freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the book community in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas. Every year the American […]
The Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, has voted to remove author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from the award the previously carried it. The award will now be known as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, though it was established in 1954 as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. From NPR: Wilder, who wrote the Little House book series, was the first recipient of the award, which was established in […]
When books are banned or protested, it gives us an opportunity to look more closely at the book being called out and, in certain cases, to zoom in for closer examination which is often followed by more sales. This is one of those times. The book in question is Justice Makes a Difference by Dr. Artika Tyner and Jacklyn Milton and illustrated by Jeremy Norton and Janos Orban. From PR material from the book: Through […]
Some of the language in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is “making some people uncomfortable.” That’s what members of a Mississippi school board said recently when they pulled the book from the eighth-grade curriculum in Biloxi. The Sun Herald broke the story: When asked Thursday morning if the book had been pulled from the course, Superintendent Arthur McMillan issued a statement five hours later that said: “There are many resources and […]
When January Magazine interviewed Salman Rushdie back in 2002, the author had reached a point in his life where it felt safe for him to live his life like a normal person, without fear of assassination. “Because the thing that I most keenly felt was the loss of ordinary life,” he said at the time. “And so it’s very good to have it back. Go stand in line in the supermarket. It’s just back to […]
A group of French booksellers and publishers have gotten together to protest censorship in an entirely new and different way. When Tous à Poil, (Everyone Naked), was attacked by a politician, these publishing professionals took their best shot in a campaign entitled “everyone naked against censorship.” Wearing nothing but carefully placed books the group said they were naked to show their “support for authors and books which have been unjustly attacked.” From The Guardian: After […]
Booker prize-winning author, Arundhatti Roy, is pointing the finger at her own publisher, Penguin, for agreeing to withdraw a book they published which has offended Hindu “fanatics.” From The Telegraph: The writer, who won the Booker Prize for her 1996 novel The God of Small Things and has since become India’s leading radical non-fiction writer, hinted she may drop Penguin over its decision. The withdrawal of American academic Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus, An Alternative History […]
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