Every fall, there’s a week dedicated to celebrating banned books. The purpose of Banned Books Week is to bring awareness and speak out against banning books. Essentially, the act of banning books is an act of censorship; you shouldn’t be able to decide for others what information they can and cannot have. While a lot of parents want books banned under the guise of protecting their children, they should realize that banning a book makes kids and teens actually want to read it more.
Silencing Stories
Banning a book also brings the connotation that everyone has the same beliefs and the same background. If you ban a certain book, you’re more than likely banning a story someone else can relate to. Before jumping to the measure of banning a book, you need to examine how it’s going to affect every kid in your school and not just worry about protecting your own teen.
Take, for example, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give. The story presented here is very real for many teens across the country, yet the police in a South Carolina town this past summer wanted the book removed from a freshman summer reading list (along with American Boys) because of the way that it portrays police brutality. They argued:
“Freshmen, they’re at the age where their interactions with law enforcement have been very minimal. They’re not driving yet, they haven’t been stopped for speeding, they don’t have these type of interactions. This is … almost an indoctrination of distrust of police and we’ve got to put a stop to that.”
While this may be true, this doesn’t mean that teens shouldn’t be exposed to what could happen, or what’s happening in many other places in the United States. Reading should be about broadening horizons, not making them smaller.
My Top Ten Banned Books
If you want to show your support to these books that many people are trying to erase from schools and libraries, I suggest buying them, checking them out, and writing reviews online. These are the best ways to support authors, and will help to open people’s eyes as to how essential these stories actually are. After all, the majority of people who ban books most likely haven’t actually read the book they want banned.
If you’re looking for something new to read and want to support books that are often censored, check out these ten young adult books that have appeared in the top ten sometime in the last ten years!
1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Banned for “drug use, profanity, and offensive language.”
2. Looking for Alaska by John Green
Banned for “a sexually explicit scene that may lead a student to ‘sexual experimentation.'”
3. Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
Banned for “homosexuality and condoning public displays of affection.”
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Banned for “drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, date rape, and masturbation.”
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Banned for “anti-ethnic, anti-family, insensitivity, offensive language, occult/satanic, and violence.”
6. Harry Potter by JK Rowling
Banned for “occult/Satanism, and violence.”
7. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Banned for “offensive language.”
8. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Banned for “offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group.”
9. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Banned for “political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence.”
10. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Banned for “gambling, offensive language, political viewpoint, graphic depictions, and considered politically, racially, and socially offensive.”
Exercise your right to read and pick up some of these banned books! I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.