Banned Book week coming up....
Strangely this is one of my favorite weeks of the year, mostly because I have a strange sense of humor and justice. I make it my mission to read as many banned books as I can that interest me that make the list.
Normally I don't know this far in advance when the banned week is coming (Its Sept 23rd to 30th this year), because I read the Harry Potter books, and they almost always make the list. Not so much anymore, but they are still banned or challenged in a lot of school districts.
It came to my attention this year because yesterday Gryffindork came home with a question from her teacher...Do we as parents have a problem with them reading the book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry? Being me that means of course I have to figure out why she would be asking. From my research I found out that "The Giver" is set is a futuristic utopian society where there is no racism, pain, war, crime or competition. Sounds like fun eh? Of course there is also no joy, color, sex or choice. I think the last one is the one that makes people want to ban this book. The concept of giving our children the freedom to make choices that affect them is completely against the "do as I say, not as I do" culture that defines the United States.
Of course in my research I found a lot of strange things that made me realize I really got to read the news more often. Like one of our representitives here in 'Bama wanted to remove from our school libraries, anything that was written by or included homosexual themes (including Shakespeare). After some fussing he removed the "classics" from the proposed ban, but never really defined what a classic was. Leaving room open of course for him to loophole in anything he felt followed his beliefs. In our currently flawed governmental system, the populace of the nation has been convinced that we as parents are no longer responsible for our children, we have elected individuals that are to take care of that pesky problem for us. They are the ones who are trying to make choices about whether or not MY child should be able to read "The Color Purple" or Oscar Wilde or Tennessee Williams or Harper Lee or Mark Twain or anything else that could possibly harm thier belief that opening thier minds and understanding that people are different, and that's not a bad thing.
I relish allowing my kids to read banned books, I enjoy (while I still have the option) allowing them to open thier minds to new worlds and new ideas and new ways of life. As a matter of fact I think I'm going to assign some required reading for that week. "Whale Talk" by Chris Crutcher is currently banned from the school district that the kids attend. It has bad language, well gee I know my kids are intelligent enough to know that cursing in school is not something they are allowed to do, and I somehow think that reading cuss words isn't going to change that fact.
Of course I'll probably read it too :)
Normally I don't know this far in advance when the banned week is coming (Its Sept 23rd to 30th this year), because I read the Harry Potter books, and they almost always make the list. Not so much anymore, but they are still banned or challenged in a lot of school districts.
It came to my attention this year because yesterday Gryffindork came home with a question from her teacher...Do we as parents have a problem with them reading the book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry? Being me that means of course I have to figure out why she would be asking. From my research I found out that "The Giver" is set is a futuristic utopian society where there is no racism, pain, war, crime or competition. Sounds like fun eh? Of course there is also no joy, color, sex or choice. I think the last one is the one that makes people want to ban this book. The concept of giving our children the freedom to make choices that affect them is completely against the "do as I say, not as I do" culture that defines the United States.
Of course in my research I found a lot of strange things that made me realize I really got to read the news more often. Like one of our representitives here in 'Bama wanted to remove from our school libraries, anything that was written by or included homosexual themes (including Shakespeare). After some fussing he removed the "classics" from the proposed ban, but never really defined what a classic was. Leaving room open of course for him to loophole in anything he felt followed his beliefs. In our currently flawed governmental system, the populace of the nation has been convinced that we as parents are no longer responsible for our children, we have elected individuals that are to take care of that pesky problem for us. They are the ones who are trying to make choices about whether or not MY child should be able to read "The Color Purple" or Oscar Wilde or Tennessee Williams or Harper Lee or Mark Twain or anything else that could possibly harm thier belief that opening thier minds and understanding that people are different, and that's not a bad thing.
I relish allowing my kids to read banned books, I enjoy (while I still have the option) allowing them to open thier minds to new worlds and new ideas and new ways of life. As a matter of fact I think I'm going to assign some required reading for that week. "Whale Talk" by Chris Crutcher is currently banned from the school district that the kids attend. It has bad language, well gee I know my kids are intelligent enough to know that cursing in school is not something they are allowed to do, and I somehow think that reading cuss words isn't going to change that fact.
Of course I'll probably read it too :)
posted by Kendi at 10:01 AM
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