{"id":7888,"date":"2010-09-01T06:58:02","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T10:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7888"},"modified":"2010-09-01T07:03:04","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T11:03:04","slug":"unbanning-books-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/unbanning-books-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbanning Books Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Miriam Forster, of the charmingly monikered Dancing with Dragons is Hard on Your Shoes<\/em><\/a> blog, has issued a challenge to writers (and readers!). It springs from an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, called Banned Books Week. From the ALA site<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.<\/p>\n

Intellectual freedom — the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular — provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.\u00a0 BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s Miriam’s call to action for the month of September:<\/p>\n

Since 1990, according to the ALA Challenge Database, over ten thousand books have been challenged in our country. These include The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>, The Lord of the Rings<\/em> by J. R. R. Tolkien,1984<\/em> by George Orwell, the Bible, and the dictionary. [JES: ?!?]<\/em><\/p>\n

The last week in September is Banned Book Week, a way to celebrate and highlight these and other censored books. In honor of Banned Book Week, a community of writers and readers have decided to be part of the Banned Book Challenge.<\/p>\n

The Challenge is simple: Read one or more banned or challenged books during the month of September, and post reviews\u00a0 of them. The reviews will be collected and posted to a central site so that people can find out more about these books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above comes from the official invitation<\/a> at the new Banned Book Challenge site which Miriam has set up.<\/p>\n

So how do you participate?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Sign up at the Challenge site, just by dropping a comment on this page<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Sometime during the month, write a review of a book which has been banned — or at least challenged, if not outright banned — and post it on your blog, on Goodreads, or a similar site. (I could do one for The Book Book, for example.)<\/li>\n
  3. Back at the Banned Book Challenge site, leave a comment on this page<\/a>, providing the link to your review.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At that point, Miriam will check to be sure your review fits the Challenge’s guidelines<\/a>. If so, she’ll include a link to your review at the Challenge site as a resource for future readers.<\/p>\n

    If you’re not sure what books are eligible for review, Miriam’s also included some lists from the ALA: a list of classics which have been banned<\/a>; and the 100 most banned or challenged books<\/a> in each of two decades: 1990-199, and 2000-2009.<\/p>\n

    (You might also check the map of the US on the ALA\/BBW press kit page<\/a>, which shows locales where books were challenged — attempted to be banned, successfully or not — in 2007-2010. Double-click on the map to zoom in, and to see details of a particular challenge just click on the corresponding marker. If you find the map to be too small for other than a quick glance, visit the full-size version<\/a> instead.)<\/p>\n

    One feature of Miriam’s challenge, I think, is especially important — and indeed it’s one of her guidelines:<\/p>\n

    This is not the forum for discussing the appropriateness of certain books for schools and libraries. These reviews are about the books themselves and your personal opinion of them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    No one — neither the ALA, nor Miriam Forster, nor I<\/em> — is demanding that elementary-school libraries start shelving copies of Mein Kampf<\/em> and the complete Hustler Magazine<\/em> archives. The point is not to debate whether children should or should not be protected, and (if so) how much. It’s to cast a spotlight on the slippery slope of the practice of banning books by reflex: not the value of a particular book in the eyes of one or more persons, but the value of books — especially fiction — to society as a whole.<\/p>\n

    Anybody else in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Miriam Forster, of the charmingly monikered Dancing with Dragons is Hard on Your Shoes blog, has issued a challenge to writers (and readers!). It springs from an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, called Banned Books Week. From the ALA site: Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,223,37,36,266],"tags":[1960,1961,1962,1963,1964,1965],"class_list":{"0":"post-7888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-02_in-the-news","7":"category-books-as-books","8":"category-onlineworld","9":"category-reading","10":"category-book-reviews-writing_cat","11":"tag-banned-book-week","12":"tag-american-library-association","13":"tag-ala","14":"tag-banned-book-challenge","15":"tag-miriam-forster","16":"tag-dancing-with-dragons-is-hard-on-your-shoes","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-23e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7889,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7888\/revisions\/7889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}