Read with your kids for Banned Books Week
This week marks the 27th annual ‘Banned Books Week’. The supporters call it ” the only national celebration of the freedom to read.” It also marks the 60th anniversary of a book burning in Binghamton NY where a group of Catholic school students led a burning of over 2000 books and mostly comic books. They also combed the local area and threatened businesses who carried what they considered ‘inappropriate’ comic books with boycott. This is relevant because the way comics were regarded back then largely echoes the way video games are treated now.
That book burning was the subject of a recently released book called ‘The Ten Cent Plague‘. The book looks at the hysteria associated with Comic Books, and in particular how many thought that it would be the ruination of our culture. It also highlights how many states enacted severely restrictive laws that caused thousands of authors to never publish again and nearly destroyed the industry. It seems hilarious to us now … yet a short perusal of any newspaper or news web site shows that those same sentiments are still alive and well, attempting at every turn to restrict freedom of speech, expression and divergent thought.
So this week take the time to read something ‘controversial’. Check out the Golden Compass in both book and film versions. Head to the BannedBooksWeek.org web site and see what great works have been challenged, banned, and burned through the years. And celebrate that over 225 years ago our founder made it absolutely clear that minority, unpopular speech was particularly in need of protection by reading a book that many people have thought about banning … including a certain Governor from Alaska.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am
According to snopes.com, the list of books supposedly banned under Sarah Palin is a hoax. However, it is a list of some of the most commonly challenged books. Handy link:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/bannedbooks.asp
I’d never made the connection between the panic over comic books and the overzealous video game critics. It will be interesting to see how this is looked on fifty years from now.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I know she never actually banned books, nor formally requested books be banned. What is factual is that meetings took place between the mayor and head librarian … during which inquiries were made about book banning ‘in rhetorical terms’.
Honestly I think people are naive if they believe the line floated that this was purely an academic discussion … it would be like a former ‘right to life’ chairman elected governor and asking his staff how they thought anti-abortion legislation would be received … theoretically , of course.
The reason I bring it up isn’t for political gain, but rather as a reminder that last year people were burning and banning Harry Potter because they feared it would turn children to the occult and so on.