{"id":230,"date":"2006-09-28T14:53:19","date_gmt":"2006-09-28T14:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/?p=230"},"modified":"2010-03-22T15:32:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T15:32:49","slug":"banned-books-and-why-censorship-makes-me-laugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/28\/banned-books-and-why-censorship-makes-me-laugh\/","title":{"rendered":"banned books and why censorship makes me laugh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center>&#8220;Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dHarper Lee<\/center><\/p>\n<p>The Pulitzer Prize winning novel &#8220;To Kill a Mockingbird&#8221; has been banned from school libraries and denounced for so-called racial slurs and profanity.   <\/p>\n<p>The American Library Association keeps a database of objectionable reads and publishes a &#8216;Most Frequently Challenged Books List&#8217;.   The list is a melting pot of celebrated authors including Harper Lee, Judy Blume, JK Rowling, Roald Dahl and Toni Morrison.  <\/p>\n<p>The ALA have teamed up with Yahoo! to promote Banned Books Week and to encourage &#8220;free people to read freely&#8221;.  <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to join the rebellion may I recommend one of my personal favourties, &#8220;I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings&#8221;.  Maya Angelou&#8217;s autobiographical masterpiece has been near the top of  <em>The list<\/em> for over two decades. <\/p>\n<p>If that doesn&#8217;t illicit a jaw-dropping &#8216;You&#8217;ve got to be kidding me&#8217; response, maybe this will.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nIn no particular order<\/strong>, a selection of the most controversial, most challenged and yes, pity upon pity, most banned books of the last ten years.  <\/p>\n<p>1.  &#8220;The Color Purple&#8221; by Alice Walker<br \/>\n2.  &#8220;Harry Potter&#8221; (the series) by JK Rowling<br \/>\n3.  &#8220;Beloved&#8221; by Toni Morrison<br \/>\n4.  &#8220;The Outsiders&#8221; by SE Hinton<br \/>\n5.  &#8220;Lolita&#8221; by Vladmir Nabokov<br \/>\n6.  &#8220;The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn&#8221; by Mark Twain<br \/>\n7.  &#8220;Of Mice and Men&#8221; by John Steinbeck<br \/>\n8.  &#8220;How to Eat Fried Worms&#8221; by Thomas Rockwell<br \/>\n9.  &#8220;Lord of the Flies&#8221; by William Golding<br \/>\n10. &#8220;Brave New World&#8221; by Aldous Huxley<\/p>\n<p>Go on.  Knock yourself out.  <\/p>\n<p><em>*See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/?p=231\"target=_blank>More Challenged\/Banned Classics.<\/a><\/em> <em> Also, for giggles check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/ala\/oif\/bannedbooksweek\/bbwlinks\/100mostfrequently.htm\"target=_blank>ALA<\/a>.  You&#8217;ll find Worms between &#8220;Girls and Sex&#8221; and &#8220;View from a Cherry Tree&#8221;. <\/em><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.&#8221; \u00e2\u20ac\u201dHarper Lee The Pulitzer Prize winning novel &#8220;To Kill a Mockingbird&#8221; has been banned from school libraries and denounced for so-called racial slurs and profanity. The American Library Association keeps a database of objectionable reads and publishes a<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hum-drum","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}