Banned Book Week

The 30th Annual Banned Books Week started yesterday. We all need to remember to be vigilant about protecting our First Amendment Right and fight back against the banning of books from our schools and our libraries. You may make the decision for yourself and your children to not read a particular book, but DO NOT push your choices for literature on me. I will decide for myself.

Just to give you an idea of what books have been banned in the past, here are some of the classics...many of which I'm sure you have read.

• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• Ulysses, by James Joyce
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison
• The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
• 1984, by George Orwell
• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
• A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
• Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

The list goes on. If you would like to find out what other classics have been banned through the years and why, go to the Top 100 Banned and/or Challenged Classics link on the American Library Association website.

Can you imagine how less rich your reading experience would be without these books?!?