September 30- Oct 6 is Banned Book Week. As the American Library Association’s website on Banned Books Week says:
“Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.”
Each year, the American Library Association releases its list of most frequently challenged books. Most of the challenges were requests to remove books from a school and public libraries, but challenges occur in university libraries too. In celebration of Banned Books Week, we encourage you to read a “banned book.” Here are a few books which have been challenged elsewhere, but are available in Langsdale:
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Brave new world by Aldous Huxley
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut