Banned Books Week - Let Fiction Do the Talking

Dodie Ownes -- School Library Journal, 9/3/2008

Now in its 27^th year, Banned Books Week will be kicked off in the American Library Association’s hometown of Chicago on Saturday, September 27 with a Read Out! event, featuring popular banned or challenged authors and local Chicago celebrities. This year’s theme, “Closing Books Shuts Out Ideas,” provides a great launch pad for the discussion, so make sure you have materials to support discussions of censorship. 

A new series from Enslow Publishers, Authors of Banned Books, covers the challenges that five popular authors have faced for their writing, including J.K. Rowling and Mark Twain. Greenhaven Press has a recent addition to its At Issue series titled Should Music Lyrics Be Censored for Violence and Exploitation? which will most definitely get the attention of young adults and teens.

Ever wonder what you’re not seeing? Check out the Project Censored Web site for “the news that didn’t make the News.” There are a number of resources available there, including a Censorship Guide for Teachers. Project Censored also puts out an annual publication that features the top 25 censored stories of the year, perfect for journalism classes and debate teams.

Fiction titles that spin on the topic of censorship tie in with Banned Books Week nicely. Ella Minnow Pea (MacAdam/Cage, 2001) tells the story of a small nation that must stop using certain letters of the alphabet by decree of its elders. In The Truth About Truman School (Albert Whitman, 2008), a couple of students quit the school newspaper in protest and create a blog that goes out of control. Harcourt has just put out a new edition of Kathryn Lasky’s Memoirs of a Bookbat, which depicts the challenges of a teen who must hide her passion for fantasy novels from her fundamentalist parents.