Local libraries highlight “challenged” books during Banned Books Week

It’s another book that made the top ten list for “most challenged”. And, just for good measure, challengers also called the book anti-family and culturally insensitive.

This lists includes “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, “Drama” by Raina Telgemeier, “Chinese Handcuffs” by Chris Crutcher, “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, and “Looking for Alaska” by John Green.

Banned Book Week is a nationwide celebration put on by the American Library Association. Banned Books Week is a celebration that, for the most part, the books have remained available. Schools and libraries across the country have received requests to ban them.

Lee Runyon, principal of West Ashley High School in Charleston, South Carolina, pulled Courtney Summers’s a few Girls Are from a freshmen Honors English summer reading list in late July after a parent complained that the novel’s explicit content describing underage alcohol and drug use, sexual assault, and body image were age-inappropriate.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t need Banned Books Week. Protests immediately erupted from residents, publishers, librarians, and 250 authors, who wrote to the mayor asking to have their own books removed in solidarity with the banned authors. Sarah Campbell, from the Portland Public Library joins the Morning report with more. “While the fear of losing their jobs is real, more often librarians tell me about professional retaliation in the form of book budget cuts or bad evaluations”. The other reason, in young adult literature, the darkness.

“Librarians have always been advocates for intellectual freedom and free access to information and censorship is going down”.

The library has a policy that outlines a formal process for challenging a book. But…

Martha Durgy of the library says a German news source was challenged once, though. The journal was “Der Spiegel”, and there was nudity on the cover. They’ve all made lists of the “most banned books” in recent years, and their controversial nature is why people in the Ozarks are recognizing them this week.