I have been spending too much time reading the posts on other blogs dealing with Banned Book Week and loving every single minute of it. There are some great things being shared and some wonderful ideas that really cause one to stop and think. I went back over the list of the top 100 challenged books in the last decade again and made a list of which ones I have read. I was suprised to find that I have only read 20 of the 100 and most of the ones I read were required reading as I went through my own schooling.
- Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
- 3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
- 5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
- 11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
- 13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
- 14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
- 19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
- 21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- 23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
- 28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
- 31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
- 41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
- 44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
- 59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
- 60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
- 69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
- 85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
- 86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
- 90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
- 96. Grendel, by John Gardner
When it is all said and done, none of these books really had any lasting impression on me in terms of banned content.Catcher in the Rye I have discussed several times on my blog is my all time favorite read and one of the elite few that I have actually read more than one time. The rest don’t have any real attachment to any parts of my brain. I have read hundreds of other books and some of those have affected me more than these.
So, my question for today is which ones on the list surprised you by being on there? Why? Were there other books that you thought would have been on the list?
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