Celebrate banned books for education
Caren Cooper / Guest Column
There's no need to consult The New York Times Best Seller list to pick your summer reading. This year, pick from the American Library Association list of Top 100 banned and/or challenged books (a challenged book is one that was the target of an unsuccessful attempt at banning). Why read books that others have found so offensive that they filed formal, written complaints with a library or school requesting that the books be removed?
First, banned books are usually some of the best and give us ideas to mull over. Young people read many banned books such as those by Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Robert Cormier and Shel Silverstein. Other popular authors who are frequently challenged include J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Maya Angelou, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, J.D. Salinger and Mark Twain. People challenge books by these authors primarily because these books confront us with ideas and perspectives that are often different from our own.
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Second, by reading banned books, we educate ourselves and defy those encouraging censorship. According to the ALA, there have been more than 3,000 attempts to ban books between 2000 and 2005 and challengers of books are usually parents with the heartfelt motivation to protect children from “inappropriate” sexual content or “offensive” language. Protecting children is certainly a commendable impulse, but banning books does not accomplish that. Parents have the right to restrict their children's access to books — but only their children's. To extend such restrictions to others is to promote ignorance, limit intellectual freedom and run counter to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Some people go beyond book banning. Book burnings occur in this century, even in the U.S. In December 2001, Pastor Jack Brock of the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, N.M., led several hundred congregants in burning Harry Potter books, along with other materials they deemed offensive, such as Shakespeare plays, J.R.R. Tolkien novels and Ouija Boards.
Kol Haverim, Ithaca's secular Humanistic Judaism community, celebrates Jewish culture while embracing a philosophy derived from Humanism. Humanism affirms, without supernaturalism, our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity. Like Pastor Brock, Humanists also don't believe in the power of Ouija Boards or the wizardry in Harry Potter. However, Humanists take a different approach to solving problems. Unlike Pastor Brock and others who seek censorship, Humanists support the open exchange of ideas — even when we are personally skeptical of the validity of those ideas.
Kol Haverim is hosting a Read Banned Books Costume Party on Friday, the eve of the release of the final book in the Harry Potter series, because this series tops the list of most frequently challenged books so far this century, according to the American Library Association. The party is open to the public and will include snacks, games for kids and prizes for the most creative costumes of characters from Harry Potter, or any banned book or of a frequently banned author. The party begins at 5:30 p.m. on the corner of the Cornell Arts Quad by Olin library near the bell tower (and continues until the live music of the Cornell summer concert series).
When I read banned books, I feel like Jack and Annie, the heroes of the Magic Tree House children's series, as they travel through time to help a librarian from King Arthur's court collect books for all posterity (I'm surprised these books do not appear on the banned list since they contain sorcery and enchantments). As John Stuart Mill wrote, to silence the expression of an opinion is to rob the human race, “If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Caren Cooper is the chair of Kol Haverim.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pb ... /707180304
Here are the top 25:
Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.
According to ALA, at least 42 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.
The titles in bold represent banned or challenged books. For more information, visit the Banned Books Week Web site.
1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, James Joyce
7. Beloved, Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
9. 1984, George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
11. Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web, EB White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
15. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
23. Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
More:
http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/piopresskits ... lenged.htm
