“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”—Benjamin FranklinPeople who were aware of this idea made the United States put the following into its Constitution:
“Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting an Establishment of Religion, or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof; or Abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press; or the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, and To Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.”—First Amendment
The American Library Association and several other organizations annually celebrate Banned Books Week to remind people to keep speech free. Books have been banned by states, cities, and schools, which have offended the expected thought patterns of political, religious, and other institutions and sometimes the United States has joined them. Usually, however, thoughtful courts have reversed such bans but the balance is ever precarious.
As long as there have been public libraries in America there have been challenges to which books can be held in the library of any particular jurisdiction and which will not be there for people to read. Each year, the American Library Association records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.
The 10 most challenged books of the 21st Century (2000-2005) are:
1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
6. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
7. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
10. Forever by Judy Blume
Top 100 Banned or Challenged Novels of the 20th Century (alphabetical by author):
It isn't only children's books that are deemed unworthy of public reading. According to ALA, at least 42 of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts:
Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Ulysses, James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
Women in Love, DH Lawrence
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
1984, George Orwell
Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
Native Son, Richard Wright
“Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”—Alfred Whitney Griswold, "Essays on Education"
“Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”—Alfred Whitney Griswold, "Essays on Education"
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