It's Banned Book Week

And if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know this is one of my passions!!

Here is the list of most challenged books for 2011:

ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence

My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit

What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit

Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language; racism

I am embarrassed to admit I haven't read many of the newer books on the list. Hunger Games, of course, but hasn't everyone? I had covered the classics, heck, Brave New World is one of my favorite books of all time. Which is why I feel the need to shout to the ether ever year for Banned Book Week..

I don't believe that anyone should have the right to tell me, or you, what books we can have access to, or what books we can read. I believe it is each persons right to make those decisions for themselves. And it's each parents responsibility to be actively involved in the books their child chooses to read.

I wish people could spend as much time working on themselves and their own lives as they do trying to control what other people can do with theirs.

But until that happens, all we can do is continue to speak out against book banning, read banned books and educate the future generation to do better!