last modified:
  26-Oct-2006 13:27

Banned Books Week

Celebrating Our Freedom to Read! Catcher in the Rye . . . Harry Potter . . . The Giver. . Every year, there are hundreds of attempts to remove books from schools and libraries. Celebrate YOUR freedom to read and right to choose your book during Banned Books Week, September 23rd to the 30th. "Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them." -- American Library Association Articles "Books Under Fire" - Teaching Tolerance Magazine "Is Harry Potter Evil?" by Judy Blume Judy Blume Talks About Censorship Websites As If! Authors Support Intellectual Freedom - Blog Kidspeak 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990 to 2000 ALA: Challenged and Banned Books ABFFE's Banned and Challenged Books List - gives reasons for challenges for many books on the list. Quotes Dwight D. Eisenhower Noam Chomsky Tommy Smothers John Aiken Voltaire   Thoughts on Censorship and Book Banning: Dwight D. Eisenhower: DON'T JOIN THE BOOK BURNERS Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship. How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It's almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions. And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned or it's not America. From the remarks of the president of the United States at the Dartmouth College Commencement, June 14, 1953. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. Noam Chomsky “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.” Tommy Smothers The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. John Aikin To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. Voltaire I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~