The INTERNET WRITING WORKSHOP: Notes For September 28th, 2009

It's Banned Books Week!

This week is Banned Books Week. The annual event, which takes place during the last week of September, was first established in 1982 by the American Library Association. (ALA) The brainchild of the late, great librarian and activist Judith Krug, Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read by encouraging people to read books that have been banned or challenged - targeted for banning. The event also promotes the freedom of libraries, schools, and bookstores to provide such materials.

To celebrate Banned Books Week, the ALA offers kits, posters, buttons, bookmarks, and guidelines for schools and public libraries who participate in the event by erecting special displays of banned or challenged books to raise awareness of these issues. Booksellers also create displays. Some go even further and invite authors of banned or challenged books to speak at their stores. They also sponsor annual essay contests dealing with freedom of expression.

Every year, the ALA compiles a list of the top 100 (or so) books that have been banned or challenged in the United States. What sort of publications make the list? Most of them are children's books that have been challenged or banned outright from schools and libraries across the country. The challenges and bans are largely the work of disgruntled parents and / or conservative or religious activist groups complaining about allegedly inappropriate content in the literary works.

A good example of this can be found the case of And Tango Makes Three. (2005). This charming picture book for young readers, written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, has earned the distinction of being the #1 most banned or challenged book for the past three years. The book is based on the true story of Roy and Silo, two captive male penguins living at the Central Park Zoo in New York City. Zookeepers noticed that for six years, Roy and Silo lived together as mates - as though one of them were female - and engaged in mating rituals. When the penguins were observed trying to hatch an egg-shaped rock, the zookeepers gave them a real penguin egg to see if they could hatch it. Roy and Silo cared for the egg and successfully hatched it. The healthy female chick, named Tango by the zookeepers, was then adopted by Roy and Silo, who raised her as their own. All three penguins lived together as a family.

And Tango Makes Three caused a furor with conservative and religious groups. Across the country, efforts were made to remove the book from schools and public libraries. Some of these challenges reached the courts, where they all failed. In one case, a Federal Court rejected as unconstitutional a local resolution passed in Wichita Falls, Texas, that ordered the public library to remove And Tango Makes Three, along with another similarly themed controversial book (Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman) from the children's section and place them in the restricted adult section of the library.

Here's my own list of the top five books, both modern classics and those from the past, which have been banned or challenged over the years, and still face attempts at censorship:

1. Bridge To Terabithia (1977) by Katherine Paterson. This beloved and acclaimed children's novel, a favorite of both young and old readers alike, (and one of my all time favorites) is still popular over thirty years since it was first published, and still appears on teachers' assigned reading lists. It's also the most banned or challenged children's book of all time. Set in rural Virginia, the heart wrenching tale of two lonely, outcast children (poor, artistically gifted farm boy Jess Aarons and imaginative, tomboyish city girl Leslie Burke) who, despite their differences, become soul mates and create an imaginary world of their own, only to be separated forever by tragedy, has been attacked for various reasons. Allegedly objectionable elements include its themes of death and grief, its bleakness and stark realism, the author's dialectic use of profane language, the ridiculing of authority figures (parents and teachers) and the negative depictions of Christians and Christianity.

2. The Catcher In The Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger. Salinger's brilliant, celebrated coming-of-age novel about rebellious, angst-ridden teen Holden Caulfield and his journey of self-discovery has been attacked since it was first published. A staple of study for high school English classes, this novel has been attacked for its frank language, sexual content, and undermining family values by promoting smoking, drinking, lying, and sexual promiscuity, and for other reasons. When teachers assign their students to read The Catcher In The Rye, they are often challenged by disgruntled parents and conservative groups, who also try to have the novel removed from school libraries.

3. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. This classic novel, a sequel to Twain's previous classic The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, features Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn on an adventure of his own. This book has been attacked by African-American activists for its frequent use of the racial epithet nigger and for its allegedly racist stereotyping of blacks. Twain scholars point out that when Huckleberry Finn meets runaway slave Jim, while initially opposed to the idea of Jim becoming a free man, Huck changes his mind after befriending the slave and traveling with him. Huck sees Jim as a good man who deserves to be free and helps him escape, even though doing so is illegal - it's considered a form of theft. Twain himself despised slavery and used his book to assail it, along with the Southern view that blacks were sub-human. Twain also assailed the Southern practice of lynching. In using the word nigger, Twain criticizes his fellow Southerners' racism by letting them speak their own ugly language. Ironically, when the novel was first published in 1884, it was attacked for its anti-racist stance.

4. The Harry Potter Series (1997-2007) by J.K. Rowling. Scottish author J.K. Rowling created a pop culture phenomenon with her series of seven fantasy novels about a young British orphan boy named Harry Potter who learns that he is a wizard. Rescued from his nasty muggle (non-magical) relatives by the giant Hagrid, Harry is whisked away into the hidden world of wizards and witches. Enrolled at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry will learn to master his magic (with the guidance of his mentor, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore) and meet his ultimate destiny - to face and destroy Lord Voldemort, the evil dark wizard who murdered his parents - as the forces of good and evil in the magical world prepare for a coming war.

Rowling's epic novels have inspired millions of children to put down their video game controllers and discover the joys of reading. She has also earned millions of adult fans as well - and the wrath of religious conservatives who claim that the Harry Potter novels encourage children to dabble in witchcraft and Satanism - despite the fact that magic is depicted as a gift one is born with and not related to a religion. Nevertheless, the books have been challenged frequently, especially in the conservative Southern states, where attempts have been made to remove the books from teachers' assigned reading lists and school libraries.

5. The His Dark Materials Trilogy (1995-2000) by Philip Pullman. British author Philip Pullman's brilliant epic fantasy trilogy is set in an alternate universe, on a world similar to Earth, in a country similar to England, where everyone has a daemon - an externalization of the soul that takes the form of a shape-shifting creature (and dear friend) that always remains by their side. The heroine is a bright, brash, imaginative, and mischievous 12-year-old girl named Lyra Belacqua. Her daemon is called Pantalaimon. Lyra is an orphan who lives with her uncle, Lord Asriel, at Oxford University.

When Lord Asriel makes an important discovery - the nature of Dust, the fabric of the universe - that threatens to invalidate the cruel, repressive, Catholic-esque monotheistic religion whose clerical body (the Magisterium) rules the world - his life is endangered. Lyra finds herself at the center of a prophecy. She is the chosen one who will not only bring down the Magisterium on her world, but bring about a revolution in Heaven as well. The being worshiped as God is actually not a benevolent god but an evil, dictatorial angel called Metatron who seized power over Heaven and the universe from The Authority - the first angel to emerge from the Dust - who is now aged and dying.

In The Subtle Knife, the second book in the trilogy, Lyra meets Will Parry, a boy her age from another universe and world (ours) who becomes her first love and partner in the prophecy, which is a reversal of John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy got its name. Lyra and Will become the new Adam and Eve, but instead of causing the fall of Man with their sin of fornication, they cause the fall of Metatron (God) and save Man. Where the Harry Potter novels invoked the wrath of religious conservatives over the issue of witchcraft, the His Dark Materials trilogy made them go ballistic, accusing author Philip Pullman of blasphemy, anti-Catholicism, and promoting atheism to children. Others complained about the books' violence, gore, sexual content, and the promotion of a heroine who is disobedient by nature and an accomplished liar.

The most (allegedly) objectionable elements of the story occur near the end. Lyra and Will free the Authority from confinement so he can die and become part of the Dust. Although an act of mercy, critics see this as the symbolic killing of God. In order to fulfill the prophecy, Will and Lyra make love. The sex scene is tastefully handled, as is the previous awakening of sexual feelings within Lyra. While Pullman's American publisher, Scholastic, Inc. (who also published the Harry Potter novels) censored some passages in the U.S. version of the third book, The Amber Spyglass, the entire trilogy of novels still faces challenges and bans in the United States.

Thanks to the ALA's Banned Books Week, more and more people have become aware of these attempts at censoring books in the United States and around the world, and the threat they pose to the individual's freedom to read what he wants and the freedom of libraries and bookstores to provide him and others with the material. The human rights organization Amnesty International joins the ALA in celebrating Banned Books Week by bringing attention to the plight of those around the world who are persecuted for what they write, publish, distribute, and read.

Exercise your freedom to read by celebrating Banned Books Week. For more information, visit the American Library Association's web site at the following link:

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

Quote Of The Day

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship." - George Bernard Shaw

Vanguard Video

Today's video is a series of videos featuring the staff of Kimberly-Little Chute Public Library in Wisconsin discussing their favorite banned books for Banned Books Week 2009. Enjoy!