Banned Books discussion

I have a poster of frequently challenged books in my class room. It attracts a fair amount of attention over the course of the year. However, the kids get confused about where and when the books were banned or challenged. Does anyone have a quick simple way of explaining frequently challenged or banned?

a map would be cool

I think I'd tell them it's just like when their parents try to ban some of the music the kids want to listen to.
The parents might hear 1 song that is racially/sexually provocative and think all songs of that genre are the same when the 1 song the parents heard might be the exception rather than the norm.
So the parents then want to ban/challenge all songs the kids are listening to.


good luck - I have a 12 going on 13 yr old girl.

I can't imagine being in a room where it's 1 adult versus however many number of kids like my Daughter and trying to teach her/them anything.

I read 2 books every so often that may give you some insight to your students.
One is The Female Brain by a woman psychiatrist
which is general and informative about the interaction between hormones and the brain.
It covers that interaction from the womb until death and what she discusses keeps coming up in a lot of things I read now.

It's not a difficult read as she doesn't put that much medical/scientific jargon in it.

When she does she explains it so no matter how science-terminology-challenged you are, it makes sense.
It is very interesting from a variety of view points besides the chemical aspect.
It includes perspectives from anthropological,
evolutional, sociological and other disiplines.

The other book is called Unhooked by a Washington Post reporter.

It's really a good read as this reporter chronicles in the field what young girls from 8th/9th grade on through young adulthood are going through in the era of the hookup.

It covers girls who go to exclusive private high schools and exclusive colleges like Duke, Georgetown etc.

It discusses the hookup relationship from both sex's perspectives but is mainly discussed from the female perspective.

I think it will help me guide my Daughter through those teenage years which are a lot harder today to deal with than when I was a teenager in the 60s.

There seem to be some historical hot-button issues around which books get banned/challenged. Adolescent sexuality, alternative sexuality, politics, cultural issues, violence, "witchcraft"/non-christian behavior or values, kids being cruel to each other, and age-appropriateness seem to be the biggies.

You could assign them to each read a book off the list and discuss what might have gotten it challenged. Kids that age are beginning to be pretty good at critical thinking, given the chance, and that way you don't have to come up with some kind of all-encompassing explanation, they can figure it out for themselves.

There's also a very simple difference between banned and challenged.

Challenged means that someone, somewhere complained about something in a particular book and requested that it be removed from a library, school, etc.

Banned means that the challenge was taken seriously and the book was actually removed.

I use both terms, because sometimes "banned books" refers solely to those banned by a government (Anarchist's Cookbook, Mein Kampf, etc.). If you look up "banned books" at Wikipedia, for example, you get a list of the latter. You have to look up "challenged books" to get those that have been removed from local libraries or curricula in the US.

I would suggest that your class of fourteen-year-olds read Places I Never Meant To Be: Original Stories By Censored Authors.

The stories in that book mostly don't fit the mold (as far as I remember) and the author writes a page or two about what they think of censorship after their story. There is also a very helpful intro by Judy Blume explaining censorship, which was what opened my eyes to the world of challenging and banning books.

I have a useful link:

If you click around on that website, you can get lists of why books were challenged and who challenged them. Very interesting, and you can choose to highlight either when, where, who, or why.

This is a very useful site:

Delete Censorship

This is such an interesting topic for me, I wonder if we have banned books and this kind of strong censorship in south america...

I am a sixth grade teacher and I have run into this issue as well. The way I handle it is to be completely upfront about it. The kids understand why some subjects are taboo, even if they don't understand the topics themselves.

Thanks for all the websites listed above, It's amazing how narrow minded some pole are to find offense in some of the books listed there. I am making my own bookshelf and commit to readiwng as many banned books as I can.

Jim,

Good comparison, although I think it's really important to differentiate between people suggesting music be banned and people who want warning labels and people who just want everyone to be more aware of what the songs are actually saying. I fall into the latter category because I think a ton of popular music is rife with hatred, sexism and racism. I think a lot of parents don't care what their kids are listening to and that worries me. I care what my kids read, too. It doesn't mean I forbid them to read it (although I'm not going to let an 8 year old read The Story of O--I don't think making your kids wait until they're a little older is inappropriate) but that I am aware of what their reading and I talk about it with them. The Twilight books really irritate me because they are so sexist and conservative but my teenagers can read them and anything else they want. I just want to talk about the books with them. (I can't say I wouldn't be concerned if I caught them with a White Supremacist book. But forbidding the book would have the opposite effect of my intent.) I think we all have books that would cause concern if we found our children reading them before they're ready. The problem is when someone decides what is right for the rest of the world, not just what is right for their children.

I've never believed forbidding anything will work. It just creates a mystique and a greater desire to find out what it is about. It's education that will get us where we want to be.

When I was in college a lot of feminist groups picketed movie theaters that played pornography. My school, however, was different. The women heard about one really bad movie, went and saw it, and then drew up flyers explaining why they felt the movie was degrading to women. They then handed these out to moviegoers as they went in. They didn't try to get the people to not go, they didn't harass them, they didn't try ot get the movie removed. They simply tried to educate.

Although I didn't and probably wouldn't participate in such a thing, I do think it's admirable that these women felt strongly about an issue, educated themselves and did something about it in a compassionate and calm way. Years later protesters handed me a flyer when I went to see The Last Temptation of Christ. The flyer said I would burn in hell for seeing the movie. I asked the person who gave me the flyer if he had seen it and the answer was "no." It made me very sad to see such ignorance. (The movie was kind of stupid and really not very blasphemous.)

Ok, I'll stop rambling now.

Somewhere my school's librarians have a book that lists all the banned/challenged books, where the actions took place, and the reasons. Anyone know the book?

No but I'd be very interested.

There's 120 Banned Books Censorship Histories Of World Literature, but I'm not sure if that is the book you mean James.

I will have to consult my almighty librarians: one of whom is a member of this group!

This serial might be of help:
Banned books ... resource book [2000 to :]
Pub.Info: Chicago, IL : American Library Association, 2000-
Frequency: Annual.
Vol.Dates: 2000-

In my opinion and based on my readings, if a book challenges the existing system and tries to show a way to change it for a better life for everyone, is most probably on the list of banned books. Whatever makes people believe that their living conditions are their destiny and nothing can be done about it and the more they suffer the more rewards await them are FREE, ENCOURAGED, AVAILABLE, AUTHORIZED...