Banned Books That Shaped America

Have you read The Great Gatsby? What about Moby Dick or Gone with the Wind? If so, these are just a few of the thousands of titles that have been banned at some point by a school, library or other organization for inappropriate content. 

Each year, hundreds of books are challenged and subsequently reported to the American Library Association. Often, the books that make it on ALA’s Challenged Books list, are the same books that have a profound impact on society and the way its readers view the world. ALA recently released its Top Ten Challenged Books of 2016 which included books like Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell and This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki. 

 Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association, ala.org/bbooks/NLW-Top10 

In 2012, the Library of Congress created an exhibition of Books That Shaped America “to spark a national conversation on books and their importance in Americans’ lives.” This year, the Banned Books Coalition cross-referenced this list with ALA’s Challenged Books lists to create a list of Banned Books That Shaped America. This list inspired the display below, which can be spotted on the third floor of the Ort Library. 

Celebrate your freedom to read by picking up one of these titles at the library today!

Banned Books Reading

Members of Sigma Tau Delta, FSU's English Honor Society, hosted its annual Banned Books Reading in the Lewis J. Ort Library on the evening of October 3rd. Participating student readers chose books that had been banned in the past as controversial like Stephen King's The Shining and Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and read selections.

Every year since 1982, the American Library Association has celebrated the freedom to read through this event. Banned books on the 2017 list included Little Bill, Looking for Alaska and This One Summer. 

Librarians and teachers resist the attempts of censors to restrict access to targeted books by celebrating rather than condemning banned titles. Banned Books available for circulation at the Ort Library were displayed throughout the week. 

If You Ban Them, We Will Read Them

Banned Books Reading, Sept. 29

On a third floor teeming with the energy of students working and generally being collegiate nearby, we co-hosted, with the English Department and Sigma Tau Delta, the English Department's honors society, a reading of books that have been challenged, banned, or removed from book stores, libraries, schools. This was part of the American Library Association's 18th annual Banned Books Week.

Students and faculty read selections from contentious texts such as Brave New World, Beloved, Han Nolan's Dancing On the Edge, Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, and Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, banned from the Laytonville, CA school district in 1989. Laytonville's chief industry: lumber.

The mood was jocular and effervescent. There were cookies.

To learn more about Banned Books Week, book challenges, and intellectual freedom, see:

Banned Books Week.org

The Nation's Blog post on BBW

Wall Street Journal: Not a big fan of BBW

Banned Books Reading, Sept. 29

The American Library Association's Banned Books week is Monday Sept. 28-Sat. Oct. 3. To commerate it, the Library is collaborating, for the second straight year, with the English Department's honor society Sigma Tau Delta to host a reading of banned

and challenged books.

Tues. Sept. 29 7:30 p.m.

3rd floor, Ort Library

free and open to the public

refreshments served

Readers will include Sigma Tau Delta members and other members of the university community.

In past years, featured titles have included Vonnegut's Slaughter-house Five, Ginsberg's Howl and America, and several Young Adult titles.

For more info, contact Jeff Maehre at jamaehre@frostburg.edu.