Banned Books Week

I’ve been quiet lately just because I haven’t really had anything to talk about. Work, writing, playing computer games. That’s about it. We went to the outlet mall in Smithfield, NC, on Saturday, which is about as exciting as it gets around here these days.

I did want to mention, however, that this week is Banned Books Week. I do NOT support the idea of banning books at all. You have the right to decide what is suitable for yourself to read. You do not have the right to decide what is suitable for everyone else to read. Parents have the right to decide what is appropriate for their own children to read and parents should know what their children are reading. But rather than trying to ban books that mention topics they’re uncomfortable with and insisting that everyone else’s children can’t read these books either, they should use the books to open discussions on these topics with their children. Just because a teen reads about drug use in a book doesn’t mean they’ll start using drugs tomorrow. I’ve read many books over the years that include drug use and alcohol abuse, and yet I’ve never once gotten high or even gotten drunk.

Do you know what book was banned for being “sexually offensive” and a “real downer”?

Yep, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

So this Banned Books Week, celebrate your right to decide for yourself what you can read. Here’s a good one, a book that made number 3 on the most frequently challenged books of 2008 and is part of one of my favorite YA series:

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“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
– Harper Lee

“The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man’s frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.”
– Max Lerner