“Until I feared I would lose it,
I never loved to read.
One does not love breathing.”
– To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Thanks to everyone who participated on twitter, facebook, and this blog with listing your favorite banned books! You wrote about books you read in high school and those that changed your perspectives. You testified about your outrage at the idea that people actually try to ban books – even those books you disliked. One reader listed books she teaches in her Banned/Challenged Books class, and another cried “Who decides these things? Ridiculous.”
Ridiculous, indeed.
I also asked NCAC staff to weigh in – among the list from staff and readers were the following books:
| Harry Potter To Kill A Mockingbird Angels in America Face on the Milk Carton Grapes of Wrath And Tango Makes Three All Quiet on the Western Front The Color Purple Ulysses |
Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret A Wrinkle in Time Brave New World Catcher in the Rye Forever The Stupids poems by Shel Silverstein Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Tropic of Cancer |
Here are more NCAC staff testimonials…
“My fave is probably The Wild Party, a 1928 Jazz-age poem in rhyming couplets by Joseph Moncure March. William S. Burroughs said it was the book that made him want to be a writer. I once recited it at an ACLU talent show.” –Emily Whitfield, NCAC board member and Communications Consultant
“Robie Harris’s sex ed books for kids, It’s Only Normal and It’s So Amazing. (The latter title refers to birth, not sex.)” – Joan Bertin, NCAC Executive Director
“Native Son. I was in college and it was my introduction to Richard Wright. I had never read anything so forceful and so angry. I probably haven’t read anything as forceful and angry since.” – David Horowitz, Media Coalition
Also, check out Judy Blume’s “Bold Question” and her top 5 favorite banned books in this week’s Time Out New York, and visit Banned Books Week for more information.