Thinking Ahead To September

We were sitting here in our office this morning, talking about what we want to do in the upcoming months, when I got hung up on banned books.
Do you know that Banned Books Week is September 27 through October 4, 2008?
Anyhow, the webmaster pulled up some interesting banned books websites and that's what I've been reading.
It's amazing which books have had complaints and the reasons why people want them banned. Here's several for instance:

• In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the American Heritage Dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."
• In 1992, former Christian fundamentalist minister, Austin Miles, was sued. Charges were that his book, "Don't Call Me Brother," was ". . .a vitriolic attack upon organized Christianity." The $4 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also screamed "libel" and "slander." After a lengthy and costly process, the court ruled that the book was not defamatory.
• An eighth grader from Stanford Middle School in California spearheaded a campaign to remove Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" from his classroom because he was uncomfortable with the use of racial slurs. The book was taken under review of the school district and was kept in the classroom.
• "The Skull of Truth" by Bruce Coville was removed from the Highland, Illinois school district because of its depiction of a gay character. A concerned parent contacted Coville, who helped address the fact that the school board did not follow a proper process in making this decision. Coville says, "The banning of a book is a serious act. To do it in secret undermines the very foundations of a free society."
• And, of course, the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has been banned in several localities.

Most books seemed to be banned due to "vulgar language, sexual explicitness, or violent imagery that is gratuitously employed."

The English Language Arts Classes at the Colquitt County High School last year discussed book challenges, book banning and the implication of that issue. They found out no banned books were removed from the high school. However, at the Moultrie-Colquitt County Library in the last 32 years only two books have been challenged; neither were removed from the shelf, but were relocated to different sections of the library.

We're going to talk more about banned books when we get to September. It's one of the things we're are thinking about celebrating. . .the "right to read," that is.