Art & History Librarian Shari Salisbury's Favorite Banned Book
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Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, New Edition by Call Number: JPL PS3503.R167 F3365 2008ISBN: 9781604131444Publication Date: 2008"Rather than ban the book about book-banning outright, Venado Middle school in Irvine, CA utilized an expurgated version of the text in which all the 'hells' and 'damns' were blacked out. Other complaints have said the book went against objectors religious beliefs."
Banned Books That Shaped America
Why Do People Ban Books?
According to the American Library Association's (ALA) web page (2016):
"Throughout history, more and different kinds of people and groups of all persuasions than you might first suppose, who, for all sorts of reasons, have attempted - and continue to attempt - to suppress anything that conflicts with or anyone who disagrees with their own beliefs.
"In his book Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other, Nat Hentoff writes that 'the lust to suppress can come from any direction.' He quotes Phil Kerby, a former editor of the Los Angeles Times, as saying, 'Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second.' "
"According to the Challenges by Initiator, Institution, Type, and Year, parents challenge materials more often than any other group."
Some Stats, Charts, and Lists
The links below are mostly for the educator's own knowledge, but the sources could also be used as a spring board for discussions and assignments for middle school on up.
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Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th CenturyThink that banned and challenged books only pertains to recent and children's books? Think again...
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Banned and Challenged ClassicsContains a list of 97 banned and challenged books that are often considered classics, both as literature and in the classroom.
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Mapping Censorship from 2007 - 2011This map shows the books that have been challenged in just the past couple years. If you click on the markers, you can see which book was questioned, why it was questioned, and what city/town the challenge took place.
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Number of Challenges by Year, Reason, Initiator, & InstitutionThis page gives a variety of graphs and other visual representation of the reasons, numbers, and other information as it pertains to banned and challenged books.
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Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2016The 2016 statistics are not available yet, but here is a list of the top challenged books for last year, and previous years.
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ACLU Banned Books InfographicA nice Infographic with information on a variety of banned books and why. Just hover over each book to learn a bit about its history.