5 Best Books: Banned or Challenged

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In honor of the ALA’s Banned Books Week (Sept 24 – Oct 1), I’m doing a list of 5 of my favorites from their list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.  I read these books during high school (1994-1998), when I still was not full aware of what censorship was.  I found out, though. Another book (that’s not on this list-check back tomorrow) taught me just how wrong censorship can be. I picked these books, also, because even now, when I’m far from the naive small-town girl that I once was, I have a hard time understanding how anyone can object to them.  I know the “official” reasons, but they do not make sense to me. I don’t think they ever will. I’m including a quote from each that, to me, seems like reason to make them required reading.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Mornings, before daylight, I slipped into corn fields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things, if you was meaning to pay them back, sometime; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.

Huck borrows food, Chapter 12.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.

pp. 91-92

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.  As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. 

Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

The one big difference between John and me, besides the fact that he’s a boy and I’m a girl, is I have compassion. Not that he really doesn’t have any compassion, but he’d be the last one on earth to show it. He pretends he doesn’t care about anything in the world, and he’s always ready with some outrageous remark, but if you ask me, any real hostility he has is directed against himself.

Chapter 2, Lorraine is narrating

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.

Chapter 4

I want to invite you all to enter my Banned Books Week Contest/Giveaway.  I’ll be drawing winners on Saturday, October 1st.  It is open to international entries.