Banned Books Week is a week-long event that celebrates the freedom to read. It was created in response to the number of books that have been challenged over the years for content/subject matter. Banned Books Week reminds us of how important it is to have access to information. The American Library Association maintains a running list of books that have been banned throughout history. You might be surprised to find many of your favorite books on this list. Because books are so important to us here at Writer’s Atelier (we all write them!), the WA team is sharing some of our favorite banned books!
When I read Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, I was just dipping my toe into the world of modern YA fiction. I instantly fell in love with not only Anderson’s writing style, but the way she delivered the story. Speak is about a tough subject matter and the author handled it with such care and attention. I had to look her up online. What I found was a flood of thank you notes from teens who said her book had saved them. All I could think about was how incredible it was to have that kind of impact and how important books are. Books can save lives, banned or not.
–Racquel Henry/@RacquelHenry
One of my favorite banned books is the His Dark Materials Series (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass), by Philip Pullman. Having less than perfect parents and forced into religious beliefs through fear were common themes in my personal life and paralleled with the children in this series. From a young age, God was painted as a tyrant to me—a loving tyrant, but a tyrant, nonetheless—and it was a sin to question the beliefs forced onto me. Books like His Dark Materials teach us it’s okay to question the establishment, seek out our own truths and find comfort and love through friendship and faith. We’re not born into perfect worlds with perfect beliefs and perfect lives. It’s books like this that give us the strength to constantly seek out a better life than we were given.
–Angelique Bochnak/@ambochnak
Dav Pilkey was always known for his kid-centered humor (ie The Dumb Bunnies), but he hit a home-run with his Captain Underpants series. It was banned from school libraries for being too “distracting,” particularly for young boys. Who doesn’t want to read about two comic-making kids who bring their superhero to life by hypnotizing their principal? He wears underwear and a red cape…that’s fantastic! Not to mention the giant robot toilet they have to defeat in the climax. Not only is this book ingeniously hilarious to children, but it does something miraculous. It makes reluctant readers want to read. As a former teacher, I had many, many boys in particular who thought reading was boring. Once they learned about Captain Underpants, they couldn’t put the book down. Or the second one. Or the third one. If they are being “distracting,” it is because they are READING! This book series is also special to me because I’ve read it with my own boys and can still hear their belly laughs when I flip through the pages. This book is truly a gift to reluctant readers and plants the seed for a love of books that will grow for years to come.
–Arielle Haughee/ahoy_author
Absolutely everyone should read George Orwell’s brilliant dystopian novel 1984. In our age of alternative facts and outright denials of recorded events, it is extremely important to read literature that reiterates how dangerous it is to forsake what our own eyes tell us in favor of what we’re told by leaders. I regularly describe current events as downright Orwellian, and I believe having read this book keeps my eyes open and my mind clear. Beyond that, one of this book’s themes is the oppression of writers, which, you know, is kind of a big deal for me, personally. Of course this is one of my favorite banned books!
-Megan Fuentes/@fuentespens
I only peripherally understood racism as a child. Things were as they were in the Bronx until I read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It was the first book to open my eyes to the injustice and racism that was in my own everyday life. As a young girl, I identified with Scout and was curious about the reasons why, just as she was. Atticus Finch was the first to make clear to me what privilege was and that I didn’t have it. It should be recommended reading everywhere.
–Laura Perez/@leperezauthor
The Nazi bonfires in 1933 burned a lot of amazing literature, and surprisingly, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild was a target. This was after the book had been banned in 1929 in Italy and Yugoslavia. I adored this book. It was my first encounter with personification of an animal. Boy, do I remember cringing, gasping, and crying. There was this dog, cast into the Alaskan Yukon to find himself in a hostile environment and even colder peers. It taught me empathy, and maybe that was Jack London’s aim, being quite the social activist in his time in addition to an avid American novelist and journalist. If you haven’t read this one, you should. There is something amazing about the pacing of the story and you find yourself shivering with Buck as he tries to adjust and survive in the cruel world he’s lost in… and I think he helped me navigate my own world at that point in my life, way back in ninth grade.
–Valerie Willis/@willisauthor
Thanks for reading! What are your favorite banned books?
