BANNED BOOK WEEK 2013: THEN AND NOW.

Hard to believe its that time of year again, hard to believe that Banned Book Week 2013 is almost upon us once again. My thanks to our gracious host, Sheila @ BOOK JOURNEY, who because of prior commitment is holding her Banned Book events a week earlier than the actual start of Banned Book Week.

First up on Pen and Paper we have the links to some posts and articles on banned books ....

• Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Banned in Australia (and I believe America) in 1969 due to the 'lurid sexual detail' and 'crude language'.The ban was lifted in 1971. See Michelle @ VintageCobweb's review HERE and Brian at Babbling Books HERE

• Anne Frank: A Diary Of A Young Girl and Judy Bloom's Tiger Eyes. See Melissa @ Books and Things thoughts HERE.

• Considered 'too shocking' and rejected as 'a pile of iniquity' after 45 years The Art Of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza is finally to be published in Britain. Full story HERE

• Banned in certain parts of Australia, Tampa by Alissa Nutting. A debut novel about a female teacher who grooms her 14 year old pupil, it has been described as 'disgusting' and 'sickening'. See article by Guardian reporter Emine Saner HERE

Interesting that whilst researching Anne Frank I discovered THIS 2013 ARTICLE which tells of a Michigan school committee who had rejected a mother's pleas to remove the book on account of it's  "pornographic" anatomical descriptions. Way to go that committee and well done the National Coalition Against Censorship who had the following to say .....

"Frank's honest writings about her body and the changes she was undergoing during her two-year period of hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam can serve as an excellent resource for students themselves undergoing these changes."

As for Tiger Eyes. Though voluntarily censored by the author herself (in the original draft main character, Davey, masturbates whilst thinking of another boy) the book, with its themes of sexuality and puberty, is still on the American Library Association's list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged books.

Next up ..... 

• With thanks to Kelly for the links to these two videos ....

Hmm, violence, racism, promotion of drugs, advocates homosexuality, BUT a sexualised spider, a racist grasshopper, talking, pro-Nazi animals.

Knowing that a book was banned because of its 'negative' themes or because the author had the same last name as a Marxist theorist was surreal enough but to ban the dictionary?????

Yes, both the Merriam-Webster and the American Heritage Dictionaries have been banned in various schools in the US as being age inappropriate. The former being banned in California in January 2010 after a single parent complained about it containing a definition for oral sex. The latter banned in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1976 because it included obscenities. One of the main causes for complaint being, would you believe it, the word 'bed' which was rightly defined as having several definitions including "a place for love making", "a marital relationship with it's rights and intimacies".

But that was then, how about now?

Well, to bring you 'bang' up to date (Whoops! Am I allowed to say 'bang'  given that as well as the obvious meaning it also has another quite different meaning here in the north east of England?) ........

The books to be CHALLENGED so far this year, challenged according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom meaning .....

 A "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness." 

include, in no particular order .....

• For its offensive language and graphic sexual content, EL James's Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy
• Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why: drugs, alcohol, smoking, sexually explicit, suicide
• Dav Pikey's Captain Underpants books: offensive language, unsuitable for  age group
• The popular The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
• Toni Morrison's Beloved - sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence.

The first of two planned post, for my second contribution, Banned Book Week: More sex scenes in books for teenagers? please join me on Thursday the 19th of September.

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