Read a Banned Book this week

It's Banned Books Week, an annual week-long event that, according to the American Library Association (ALA), celebrates "the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment". It aims to highlight the dangers of censorship and attempts to draw attention to any calls to ban books within the USA. 

What do we mean by banning a book? The ALA categorizes it as: A ban placed on a book completely removes it from the shelves of the bookstore/district library/school library where the challenge was made and in some rare occasions this can have state wide impact. 

A challenge in this instance refers to not one complaint, or even just a few, but a formal protest made by a group against a specific title filed with the library or store. No book has had a federal ban placed on it for decades now, but challenges on certain titles persist throughout America in individual towns and school districts year after year. 

So what kind of books are often objected against? Here's just a small selection:

·                     The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

·                     Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

·                     The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.

·                     To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

·                     The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

·                     Animal Farm by George Orwell.

·                     Beloved by Toni Morrison.

·                     Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

·                     Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

·                     His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

For a more comprehensive list, here is a link to the ALA's website. Pick one or more books from this list to read this week.