Banned Books Week Roundup « Books Worth Reading

Banned Books Week Roundup

October 3, 2008 at 8:40 am | In Books, On the Web | 6 Comments
Tags: Banned books, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Atwood, Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl, Science fiction

Book cover via Amazon

I’ve really been enjoying all the posts around the book blogosphere in honor of Banned Books Week this week. So many of my personal favorites are also challenged books. That can’t be a coincidence. Great literature and bold ideas will always be challenged, because they make you think and have the power to effect change. Challengers may say it’s all about dirty words and inappropriate subjects for children, but it really is about the ideas.

I thought I would post a roundup of some reviews from other blogs of my favorite challenged books. If you have any you’d like to add, please leave them in the comments.

An Unfinished Person (in an Unfinished Universe) reviews In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak (which I also reviewed).
I haven’t actually read And Tango Makes Three, but based on this review at SHUmanities, it seems like an important book; I’m going to get it for my son.
Here’s a review of one of my all-time favorite books from my childhood, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, over at Things Mean a Lot.
Another favorite author from my childhood, Roald Dahl, gets reviewed on Maw Books Blog — James and the Giant Peach – and Strollerderby — The Witches.
Just a (Reading) Fool reviews Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut; here are my thoughts.
One of my favorite books of all time, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, is reviewed on The Book Lady’s Blog.
Devourer of Books takes on another of my favorite books, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
For even more good reading, here is an excellent roundup of banned science fiction posted on From a Sci-Fi Standpoint.

Here’s another roundup of Banned Books Week reviews from Age 30+…A Lifetime of Books.

I’m sure I missed a lot of great posts and reviews. But I think this response illustrates the value of Banned Books Week: It gets people reading and discussing books that have been challenged and exposes us to new books and new ideas.

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Thanks for the shout-out! I’m glad you’re enjoying the banned books party.

Comment by Rebecca — October 3, 2008 #
Challengers may say it’s all about dirty words and inappropriate subjects for children, but it really is about the ideas.

I think you’re right, and this reminds me of a point I should have made in my own post, but overlooked at the time.

It seems that most of the people leading the charge to ban books are the religious, particularly those of the more fundamentalist varieties, and most of these bans involve school libraries. These bans are aimed largely at children. Why? So that the beliefs these folks want to instill in their children have no competition. They don’t want their children to be exposed to different ideas and then weigh them and choose the best; rather, they want exclusive rights to fill those young minds with their own beliefs, with no other ideas getting in the way. To me, that says a lot about religion.

Comment by Bill the sci-fi guy — October 3, 2008 #
Bill, I think you are so right in your comment that people want to ban books because of the competition of ideas. That shows a fear that the ideas and values you are teaching might not be strong enough to compete. Parents who let their children read anything, like my parents did, seem to have much more faith that their children can work it out for themselves.

Comment by Shannon — October 4, 2008 #
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