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Banned Books Week

By Alicia Waters | October 2, 2009

“Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.”-cited from the American Library Association website.

Below are books featured in ContentWire from OverDrive, a distributor of digital content for libraries. E-Zone is Rhode Island’s Overdrive source for downloadable titles through Ocean State Libraries (OSL), a consortium providing 4.5 million items in 50 library systems in Rhode Island. These books are also available as cassettes through Talking Books Plus.

The words in this posting, American Library Association website, E-Zone, and Talking Books Plus, have links to other webpages.

BANNED CLASSICS – Banned for its themes of sexuality, drugs and suicide

Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley RC47108

1984 by George Orwell RC34268 

Lord of the Flies by William Golding RC48388

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck  RC68308

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner RC49008

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut  RC64540

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain  RC57349

TEEN TITLES – Banned for offensive language, being sexually explicit and age-inappropriate

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher RC52057

Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden  RC21438

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier  RC33593

Prep by Curtis Sittenfield RC59891

Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher  RC38285

CHILDREN’S – Banned for political and religious viewpoints and violence

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman  RC44343

The Witches by Roald Dahl  RC46021

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle  RC48972

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson  RC51866

On, The Places You’ll Go by Seuss  RC30795

The Lorax by Seuss  RC31231

Sylvester & the Magic Pebble by Wiliam Steig  RC50353

How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell  RC33534

The Amazing Bone by William Steig  RC53092

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak  RC22906

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak  RC43615

LITERATURE  – Banned for obscene language and themes

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov  RC67388

Ordinary People by Judith Guest  RC10149

Rabbit, Run by John Updike  RC15182

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown  RC55735

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving  RC29012

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice  RC40643

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett  RC30999

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou  RC57200

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini  RC57457

Beloved by Toni Morrison  RC26026

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