Time for another Banned Book Week.
This year I’m taking a look at some of the most frequently challenged books of 2015.
Are books that you’ve read on this list? I’m looking forward to exploring more of them — I had only read one of them before I started looking at what I was going to do this week, I’ve now read a few more of them, and made the decision not to read a few others… but I’ll talk about them still!
The focus of banned book week this year is Diverse Books. The ALA has a bit of an exploration about what they mean by “diverse” that is worth a read.
Censorship thrives in silence; silence is its aim.
This year’s top ten list is very much the tip of the iceberg, with a lot more going on outside our field of vision. But it could be that the shape and composition of the iceberg can be discerned from what we can see. – James LaRue, director of the Office for Intelletual Freedom, ALA.
One great resource for more about diverse books is We Need Diverse Books – I’ve been a fan since they started out. There is a deep need for diversity in the books we read – diversity of all sorts. People need to be able to see themselves in what they read, and there is a severe lack of diversity out there. So when diverse books are being challenged… It is a sad reflection of what is happening in our world right now.
