Banned Books Week Marks Its 30th Year

why did they ban the book i love you beth cooper?

I have read a few of these books and do not find them offensive. I find people who wish to ban these books to be offensive. They probably have never read them or they can't read period. Iread what I want. If someone doesn't like my choice of books, don't go looking over my shoulder. I read pretty much anything. They even wanted to ban Harry Potter because it didn't define the line between good and evil. I hate to say it, but the line between good and evil was always thin.

Isn't ryans daughter on the banned list. that and to kill a mocking bird, anne frank, grapes of rath, animal farm, were all on the reading list in school. then there is a childs book that was banned years ago. a childs book. ( little black sambo ). but with the riots of the sisties and all the black negativities, even my favorite resturant ( sambos ) a pancake house. the first book that should be on the banned list is the bible. it has more violence, sex and debotchery than any book. the only place it is banned is in public schools. the way i feel about book banning is, i'd like to shove the books up their #$%$ without lube..reading is the same as watching a movie.if you don't like whats in it don't read it. haven't they tried to ban the total works of shakespear? if it were up to these jerks we wouldn't have any books to read. they would either be banned or burned. and by god i dare any one to try and tell me what i can and can't read. And if my kid needs to read it for school they will this is not nazi germany or any islamic country or communist russia or china. this is america land of the free and that also mean speech, viewing and reading. and these self appointed censors can just suck the big one and sit on the barrel of my rifle.

Yes, lets keep the wool over their eyes until they are 18 then throw them to the wolves. What could go wrong?

I have a special shelf in my library devoted to banned, challenged, or Indexed books...and I will die to defend them.

So basically my high school English class took the banned book list and made it our yearly book curriculum.

The best part about my local library is the bulletin board they have at the entrance with complaint notices about books individual people try to ban or get put into an "adults only section". It's always for dumb reasons like "this book has the word sex in it" or "some characters are gay" or "this book mentions a religion that is not Christianity". It's good for a quick laugh, but then reality sets in and I realize that these people all live in my community.

We should be able to read whatever we want, and the writers should be able write whatever they want. If people don't want to read something, don't read it. It's as simple as that. no books should ever be banned..

I think it's funny how literature that seeks to capture the human condition so that we may learn from it & become better individuals is condemned by close-minded, ignorant people who haven't taken the time to educate themselves on the subject matter.

Meanwhile, the exact same people promote sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, and racism through on-line media. But it's okay to laugh at those topics & expose children to them so long as they pay their membership fees & are able to promote products using pop-up advertisements. It's also okay to use religion to completely suppress independent thought, and impose an arbitrary set of controls on large groups of scared, ignorant people disguised as "The Word of God."

What it really boils down to is that censorship has NOTHING to do with correct moral behavior, and EVERYTHING to do with keeping the general population ignorant, fat, sedated, happy, and constantly spending their money to keep the corporations & political machine running.

People who are well educated, who have been exposed to the horrors resulting from ignorance, who question the world around them & take the time to learn more in order to form educated opinions - those individuals usually end up with a strong moral compass & an ability to make good judgement calls without being subject to another person's arbitrarily imposed laws. The problem is that those people also see our world for what it really is - and they make their opinions heard in the way they vote & the way they spend their money. That's just too dangerous for those who are in power to tolerate.

Wow, seriously? Most of these are books children should be encouraged to be reading. Sure, let's keep them blind to the real world and all the horrors that come with it, and just force them to stay in their mind-numbing utopia of sparkly vampires. Of course. No wonder our society is full of morons.

Not everyone lives in the mainstream of a culture. Those who live on the margins frequently have insights to offer that are inaccessible to the rest of us, and therefore valuable. We need to consider all perspectives. Having said that, it is also important to note that a book should have something more to offer than its shock value. But censorship never works, because inevitably it paints with too broad a brush.

If a book is stirring up controversy, it must be worth a read. Even if you don't end up liking it, at least try to appreciate what it's talking about, what it's challenging. We need more people who can think critically.

I read To kill a mockingbird a couple years ago when I was a freshman in highschool. I didn't even see a problem with the book. It accurately portrayed the way life was in the south during that time period and it was a good #$%$ book.

Those that wish to ban books have no life. They think everything out there to read is bad. Most of your books about magic and witchcraft in children's books have been banned.

Not only have I read most of them, a couple of them were on the required reading list.....Nothing wrong with any of those books as far as I'm concerned....Discussion is the only thing that will explain those books to the young adults that read them.

we had to read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lord of the Flies in high school. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great book. It seems like most the books we read in high school are on the banned book list. :D

I also have a shelf of banned books. I read many of the books on the banned list before I graduated high school. I don't intend to get into a shoot out over them but I will fight to keep them. I have brought the original Little Black Sambo in to black co-workers who had been told how racist it was but had never read the book. One commented that he felt the Names were rather juvenile, but , he found no racism in the book. No one else thought there was any problem. The most common question I was asked was: "It this It?" The old Uncle Remus stories are now considered racist. It is claimed that the book uses a "black dialiect." I have read the book and so did my children and now my grandchildren. All we ever thought about Uncle Remus, was that he was a kindly old man who liked to tell stories with moral values to children. As far as the accent, It could have been almost any old Southerner back then. The PC police are everywhere. My daughter works in the local public library. The older Sesame Street videos now come with Parental warnings. Apparently Oscar the grouch living in a trash can was teaching children that homeless people were mean, and cookie monster was teaching bad eating habits. This would be comical if it were not true. Pass the Execedrine please.

People have the right to read what they want. Forcing one's beliefs on everyone else limits our potential as human beings.

how the f is 1984 banned and controversial. That book is the Bible of modern politics

1984 by George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Farwell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Fahrenheit 541 by Ray Bradbury
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Forever by Judy Blume
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In the Sprit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen
Jaws by Peter Benchley
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Ulysses by James Joyce
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle Albatross by Josie Bloss
Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Alice on Her Way by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Am I Blue? By Marion Dane Bauer
America by E.R. Frank
Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Bullet Point by Peter Abrahams
Burn by Suzanne Phillips
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher (or any book by Chris Crutcher)
Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Deadline by Chris Crutcher
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Eight Seconds by Jean Ferris
Endgame by Nancy Garden
Fade to Black by Alex Flinn
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
Freaks and Revelations by Davida Wills Hurwin
Geography Club by Brent Hartinger
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Hang-ups, Hook-ups, and Holding Out: Stuff You Need to Know about Your Body, Sex, and Dating by Melisa Holmes and Trish Hutchison
Hate List by Jennifer Brown
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
If There Be Thorns by V.C. Andrews
Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
Inexcusable by Chris Lynch
Inside a Thug’s Heart by Tupac Shakur
Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
Ironman by Chris Crutcher
Jaws by Peter Benchley
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Jumping Off Swings by Jo Knowles
Kendra by Coe Booth (or Tyrell by Coe Booth)
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast (or any of the “House of Night” series)
Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: a Savannah Story by John Berendt My Father’s Scar by Michael Cart
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Night Talk by Elizabeth Cox
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Prep: a Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld
Rage by Julie Anne Peters
Raider’s Night by Robert Lypsite

This isn't even the entire list . . . .