Happy Banned Books Week!

Every year I try to celebrate Banned Books Week with a blog post and by adding a banned or challenged book to my TBR list.  Often I find out it's Banned Books Week toward the end of the week, but this week I actually saw a post about it on Sunday!  Banned Books Week is this week, September 22-28.

The list of top challenged books of 2023 has a lot of repeats on it from last year's list:

1. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
2. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
3. This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
5. Flamer by Mike Curato
6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
7. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins (tied)
8. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (tied)
9. Let’s Talk About It by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
10. Sold by Patricia McCormick

If you compare this to the list published during Banned Books Week in 2023, you'll see a lot of repeats.  In fact, the only books on this list that weren't on last year's list are Tricks (by the same author as Crank, which was on last year's list); Let's Talk About It, which is just basically sex ed in graphic novel format; and Sold, which has been on top-10 lists of challenged books in the past.

Every year, I try to read at least one banned book, preferably one from the list.  From last year's list, I had already read quite a few of the books, so I chose to read and review Me and Early and the Dying Girl and Lawn Boy.  I also read Crank, Flamer, and Out of Darkness, and This Book Is Gay, and I've had Gender Queer, The Bluest Eye, and A Court of Mist and Fury on my list ever since.

This year I'm going to bump up Gender Queer and The Bluest Eye on my TBR list, and add Tricks.

How do you celebrate Banned Books Week?  I think the right to read and explore our world, and for our children to do so too, is one of the most important rights to exercise.  My first response any time I see a book being talked about or challenged is to want to know why.

As Stephen King has said, "When books are banned from school libraries, run to your public library, or the nearest bookstore, and read what it is your elders don't want you to know."

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