“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” — Judy Blume
I read this recently and I find it really hard to believe that someone is hoping the desire to censor books is going to make her popular. I don’t like anyone trying to tell me what to think and I especially don’t like people who try to ban books. The phrase “book burning nazi” springs to mind. Many of these books are classics, many are classic children’s books/stories that generations of children have grown up reading and others are autobiographies. How can you ban the story of someone’s life? Just because you didn’t like it didn’t mean it didn’t happen, you can try to ban it but it still happened and people want to read about it. Some of these books below are on the list because of sexual content or personal views of the person who is trying to ban the book, so now we get back to someone trying to make everyone else think like them! Sorry dear, not going to happen. Have you not learned anything? If you ban it, they will read. They will read books they never thought of reading before just because they are now somehow “illicit”. So what you do by banning books is actually encourage more people to want to read them! I have to wonder also looking at this list if the person trying to ban them has actually read them all? I have my doubts. Most of these are already on many of the “most banned and challenged books” lists so it looks like a quick copy/paste job to me and no more thought went into it than that!
Anyway, here is a list of books to ban recommended reading list for you:
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is one of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
So there we have it, not a bad list of books really. I’ve read a lot of them but there are some on there that i will have to track down – thanks Sarah! Good luck banning the classics that people have been reading for 100+ years, yup most of those you can find free on the net, so good luck with that. Ditto Harry Potter. Way to jump on the “ban Harry Potter” bandwagon too. What people seem to be having a problem with here is separating fact from fiction. Harry Potter is FICTION, there really isn’t a wizarding school where they all zoom around playing quidditch on broomsticks (cool though that may sound).
Anyway, don’t forget to read some of these excellent titles in fact you can find quite a few of them in our Banned Books shop by clicking on the Buy Stuff link at the top of the site. While you’re at it, why not pick yourself up some cool “got banned books” merchandise from our Cafepress shop to show your support and celebrate these great books.
