Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Highlights on Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week is underway around the country (Sept 30 - Oct 6), celebrating its 30th year of challenging literary censorship. To get you up to speed on the most challenged books of the last year (including The Hunger Games, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and To Kill a Mockingbird), Huffington Post put up an informative infographic breaking down the categories under which the Top Ten most banned books fall.The graphic also displays the number of challenges made over the past twenty years, a useful tool in examining the changing trends.

Check out Publisher Weekly's Banned Books Week at 30: New and Notable Efforts to learn details about some of the events and efforts being held across the nation.

Locally, the San Diego Public Library is holding an All-Day Read-Aloud Reading Marathon on Thursday October 4th at the Central Branch. It's being held in conjunction with their months long library project, Searching for Democracy: A Public Conversation about the Constitution sponsored by Cal Humanities. Check out their site for details and more events: http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/news-events/index.shtml.

Lastly, we share an essay by Ray Bradbury, taken from the Introduction to The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, which highlights his own adventure of falling in love with books:
"I asked big questions because of books. I dreamed because of books. I started to write because of books. I read everything from comic strips, to history books, to the fantastic tales of L. Frank Baum, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, and many others. None of this reading was required, mind you. I just did it."
The essay can be found here.
Find more information on Banned Books Week on their website: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

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