Banned Books Reading Challenge (Sept 1 - Oct 2)

The absolutely lovely Steph Su has created this challenge for bloggers and specifically young adult bloggers to read books that have been banned or challenged.  In light of the Ellen Hopkins v. Texas fiasco, I think the time is absolutely right for this challenge!

Steph is asking us to read one banned book a week for the duration of the contest.  We can do more or less depending on time and how fast one reads.  I would really like to see my readers of this blog pick up a banned book (I'll post resources below), read it, and let me know why you think this book was banned, challenged by school systems.  I'd like to keep this in the young adult genre and we know there are tons of books in the past decade that have been challenged.

I'm really excited about this and will try to come up with some great giveaways.

As always Banned Book Week is September 25 - October 2, and the ALA goes out of it's way to promote this.

This is taken directly from Steph's blog:

Goals of This Challenge:

• To bring attention to books that have been challenged or banned
• To support authors whose freedom of expression have been questioned or challenged by buying and reading their books
• To increase awareness of censorship

Resources:

• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Challenged Children's Book List. This list is divided up into age group, which is definitely convenient.
• 10 Frequently Challenged Books Everyone Should Read at Paste Magazine
• Hit List for Young Adults 2 by Teri Lesesne and Rosemary Chance. Written for librarians combating censorship but provides a list of 20 titles that may or may not interest you.
• The left-hand sidebar of the ALA Frequently Challenged Books site features many ways in which challenged books are broken down by year, decade, type of challenge, etc. Very fascinating to look at.
• The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has a great website dedicated to Banned Books Week, the freedom to read, and reviews of banned books.
• The Illinois Library Association issues a fantastic bibliography every year noting the books challenged that year. This could help you a lot with more recently challenged books. 
• The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has compiled a shocking list of challenges made in the state.

Try to do your part and read at least one challenged book and tell us what you think.  Or if you have a blog, why not sign up for this challenge.  I've linked Steph's blog and the post above and on the Ban This picture on the right side of the blog.