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Banned Books Week 2010
September 25th - October 2nd
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About Banned Books Week:
Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the first amendment. Held during the last week of September, BBW highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States.
Intellectual freedom - the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular - provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox and unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.
The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.
The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles lists of most frequently challenged books. They do not claim to be comprehensive in recording challenges as research shows that for each challenge reported there as many as four to five which go unreported. In addition, OIF has only been gathering data about banned books since 1990.
Statistics:
- Over the past nine years, American libraries were faced with 4,312 challenges.
- 1,413 challenges were due to "sexually explicit" material.
- 1,125 challenges were due to "offensive language."
- 897 challenges due to material deemed "unsuited to age group."
- 514 challenges due to "violence."
- 344 challenges due to "homosexuality."
- 109 materials were challenged because they were "anti-family."
- 269 were challenged because of their "religious viewpoints."
- 1,502 of these challenges (approximately 34%) were in classrooms.
- 33% of these challenges were in school libraries.
- 1,032 (23%) were in public libraries.
- There were 100 challenges to college classes.
- There were 29 challenges to academic libraries.
- The majority of challenges were issued by parents (48%) while patrons and administrators followed (10% each).
Top 10 Books Challenged in 2009:
- TTYL, TTFN, L8R, G8R (series) by Lauren Myracle.
- And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Twilight (series) by Stephanie Meyer
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
- The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Banned and Challenged Classics:
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulker
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
- The World According to Garp by John Irving
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
- A Room with a View by E.M. Forrester
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
- Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- Howards End by E.M. Forster
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
- The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie
- Sophie's Choice by William Styron
- Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- Ethan Fromme by Edith Wharton
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Orlando by Virginia Woolf
- Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
- Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
- Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
- Light In August by William Faulkner
- The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
- A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
- Brideshead Revisisted by Evelyn Waugh
- Women In Love by D.H. Lawrence
- Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
- In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
- The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- Wide Saragasso Sea by Jean Rhys
- White Noise by Don DeLillo
- O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wills
- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
- The Bostonians by Henry James
- An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
- This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
- Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
- The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
- Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
- Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie
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