By AMANDA CHRISTY BROWN AND HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO
Source: The New York Times
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| Pictured: The vault-like room in the Brooklyn Public Library. |
Held annually during the last week of September,
Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools.
Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week –- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having “the freedom to read.”
1.
Classic Challenges: Books commonly taught in secondary schools show up again and again on the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged list. Why are some books challenged year after year?
Find out why and then “adopt” a banned book like
“The Catcher in the Rye” or
“To Kill a Mockingbird” by investigating its history of challenges. (For example, a site search for “Huckleberry Finn” on nytimes.com reveals the 1885 editorial
“Trashy and Vicious,” republished from The Springfield Republican, on the Concord Library’s ban of the book. You’ll also find a
1902 letter from Mark Twain on the Omaha Public Library’s ban.) Then promote a “read-in” of one or more challenged or banned books in your school library.
3.
Big Name Bans: Did you know that “Harry Potter” topped the library association’s list of most challenged books in the year 2000? Other recent frequently challenged books include the “Twilight” series and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Learn more about recent challenges and then create posters to promote intellectual freedom using some of the titles. One idea: Create a collage of book jackets of some of the most famous banned books. Another: Create a
map of challenges, to demonstrate that book bans and challenges are not isolated phenomena, even in the United States. Ask to hang the posters in the school or local library.
4. Join the Club: Create book clubs around banned books. To investigate titles for your club to read, you might use the Books section, including the drop-down menus for finding book reviews and coverage of featured authors. Then hold book “pitches” and form club reading schedules. As you read, respond to the texts, and then execute a final project, either individually or as a group.
5.
Blog All About It:
Read this article featuring a New Jersey family that blogs together about books and encourages support of Banned Books Week. Choose a banned title to read as a family. Discuss it over dinner and/or online together. Include far-flung extended family by blogging or writing literary letters.
6. ‘
Speak’ or Not?: This week, a university professor, Wesley Scroggins,
attacked Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak” as “soft pornography” in The Springfield News-Leader of Missouri. Ms. Halse Anderson responded on her
blog, as did the teacher and blogger Donalyn Miller on
The Book Whisperer Blog. Read the blog posts and discuss both positions. What is “soft pornography”? Should teenagers, as novelist and Harvard student Isabel Kaplan argues in her
Huffington Post post, read books with such content? Adapt this
2006 lesson on a book ban in the Miami-Dade school system to study the controversy and write letters to The News-Leader expressing your opinion about the issues raised in the debate. Decide whether or not you want to read “Speak” yourself.
7.
Librarians for Liberty: Have you ever been caught reading under the covers? So was the late Judith Krug, the librarian who created Banned Books Week –- and
her mother’s reaction to what she was reading taught her a lesson about having the freedom to read that later translated into her passion for the First Amendment and intellectual freedom. Learn more about
Ms. Krug and consider the
role of libraries in our democracy. What are the implications of book banning? What role do librarians and libraries play – even in the digital age –- in protecting intellectual freedom? Work with school or local librarians to plan a Banned Books Week event -– perhaps a read-a-thon or book festival, featuring banned books, with proceeds to benefit the library. Be sure to
thank your librarians for the important work they do.
8.
Protective Policies: See how librarians at the Brooklyn Public Library
handle challenges to books and other creative works in their collection, and read some sample requests for reconsideration and responses. Consider the fact that different people find different books “detestable,” and that in the name of freedom the Brooklyn library stocks books that offend or disturb many people, like “Mein Kampf.” Interview your local or school librarian about the library’s
policies and guidelines about what books to stock and how to handle challenges. Then draft a policy that takes into consideration First Amendment freedoms and tolerance for a range of beliefs and values.
9.
Spotlight Censorship: Read about a 2008
traveling exhibition called “Censorship in Public Schools and Libraries,” sponsored by the Long Island Coalition Against Censorship. Research issues of censorship in your area or on a certain theme (like journalism) and build an exhibit of artifacts to represent the history you discover. Write exhibition tags explaining each piece, and invite the community to visit. The American Library Association offers additional display ideas to mark Banned Books Week.
10.
Go Global: The Times often covers books and other works that have been censored internationally, like in China and Iraq (as well as, occasionally, by the
United States). Read about the
role of books in other countries and the implications of book banning abroad and explore Web sites commonly blocked in countries like China and Saudi Arabia. Consider why these governments want to block the content in question, and how national history, culture and politics come into play during such episodes. What does a country’s censorship history tell us about what its government and citizens value? Create a timeline or narrative history of one country’s relationship with censorship, including, if possible, interviews with people who have direct experience.
How are you celebrating Banned Books Week?
The words above are not mine. But they fully express how I feel about books, and Banned Books. I wrote a
post last year - one of the first ones I wrote on this blog (Happy Birthday Thummprints). I work in the book industry and I find that people are often shocked that books are still banned in this great country of ours, and they are even more shocked when they find out what some of the books are. Classics. Children's books. Current blockbuster movies that were originally books.
It saddens me to think that books can not only be banned, but that there are people for whatever reason - fear or ignornace - that think banning a book is good for their children. For our country. But that's the beaurty of living in this country - we have the freedom to choose.
Celebrate your freedom to read this week - pick up a Banned Book and read.
