It's Banned Books Week.
Of the list on this page, I've read the following:
- The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (partially read)
- Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
- Forever by Judy Blume
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
- My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
- The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
- Blubber by Judy Blume
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (in my TBR pile)
- Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
- The Pigman by Paul Zindel
- Deenie by Judy Blume
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Cujo by Stephen King
- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
- Fade by Robert Cormier
- The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney (does seeing the movie count?)
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Carrie by Stephen King
- Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
- The Dead Zone by Stephen King
- Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
- Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
- How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
When I was a teenager, I used to make it a point to read "banned" books. No one was going to tell me what to read. Granted, the library was rather small at my school, and most of the books I read on my own time from the town library. I can recall only one person at my school who read an alternate selection when the English teacher was reading a certain book. However, I don't recall what book it was. If I recall correctly, her parents objected to the book. *shrugs* They were conservative Baptists, and she wasn't in my class.
I remember reading "Crime and Punishment" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in high school. Reading those two books awakened my love for classic literature and for Russian literature. I can't say I was too keen on the Shakespeare we read, though.
I like to think I was subversive, reading "Gone with the Wind" in sixth grade, and "The Color Purple" in eighth grade. That book of mine got passed around quite a bit. I was reading a lot on my own. I read "The Winds of War" in junior high as well. No one ever objected to the books I was reading or to the ones I was passing around to other students. My mom let me read anything and everything.
In fact, I was in college when a friend of mine told me that her parents objected to a particular book she borrowed from me. She had left the book lying on her bed and her mom saw the title. I guess the title "Hot Blood" plus the book's subject matter would bother certain types of people. ;)