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Happy Banned Books Week--a week where we celebrate the freedom to read by drawing our attention to the harms of censorship. Every year, the American Library Association (ALA) collects data on books that are challenged and banned from classrooms and libraries across the country, and the list of the year's most challenged books can offer a unique glimpse at what our society fears most.
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YouTube Pick of the Week
There's been a shift toward seeking to ban books "focused on issues of diversity--things that are by or about people of color, or LGBT, or disabilities, or religious and cultural minorities," LaRue says. "It seems like that shift is very clear." --Time Magazine, 9/25/16
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Magazines
This week's magazines are available on the coffee table in the LRC.
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Books
Looking for Alaska (2006) by John Green
Location: FIC Green
Reason for bans/challenges: "Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group."
Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
After. Nothing is ever the same.
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Goodreads
Click below to watch John Green's response to the banning of
Looking for Alaska:
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2007) by Alison Bechdel
Call Number:
GRA Bechdel
Reason for bans/challenges: "Homosexuality, violence"
In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
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Goodreads
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(2004) by
Mark Haddon
Call Number:
FIC Haddon
Reason for bans/challenges: "Profanity and atheism."
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.
Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.
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Goodreads
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Tech Corner
Goodreads (app & website)
This is the best app/site for keeping track of what you read, seeing what people in your social networks are reading, reading user reviews of books, and finding what to read next. This is THE social media outlet for book lovers.
Creating an account is free. You can connect your account to your other social media outlets to locate friends and see what they've read, reviewed, and "want to read."
Download the app on iTunes here...
Visit the website by clicking here...
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