Banned Books.
I had to do a project for my Young Adult Literature class at University of New Mexico in which I should select 5 books with a corresponding genere or theme for my imaginary young adult class to study. I could determine their grade and ability level, as long as it was somewhere withing the young adult reading range, somewhere from around 6th grade to about college freshman. After much thought,I decided that I would select 5 books that were on the American Library Associations list of Challenged or Banned books in the last couple of decades. I chose the following five: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie; The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky; Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya; Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher; and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I choose these five books because for the most part they each had different reasons why they had been banned. Only The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn didn't have reasons unique to them. But although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shared both reasons given for challenging or banning it with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (offensive language and racism), I felt that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was an especially important one to include because it is also considered a classic literary work.
The unique reasons for banning the other books are as follows: The Perks of Being A Wallflower, although banned for many other reasons was different from the other books I chose because it included homosexuality. Bless Me, Ultima was considered for banning because it contained references to the occult and Satanism. Althouh Thirteen Reasons Why was probably most often suggested for banning because it contained suicide (the story is about a girl who leaves behind 13 cassete tapes explaining the 13 reasons why she committed suicide, and the 13 people she holds responsible), that reason was shared with The Perks of Being A Wallflower. Its unique reason was drugs/alcohol/and smoking (although, frankly, drugs was one of the reasons given for The Perks of Being a Wallflower as well, so I guess alcohol and smoking would have to be the real "unique" qualities.
For each book, I was assigned the task of writing about a 1/2 page summary, 1/2 page critique (including grade level), and a lesson plan. I was also tasked with writing a 4-5 page explaination of why I chose these books, what order I would read them in, and why.
I don't know why I decided to create more work for myself, other than I found the banned book site on the American Library Association fascinating, but I decided to create a wrap up lesson as well. The ALA has a National Banned Book Week each September. I thought it would be appropriate, if I were teaching a real class, and we had read these books, to do a class Banned Book Week, incorporating some of the activities they do at the National one. So, in creating this wrap up lesson, and in creating my activities for Banned Book Week, I decided to do a Banned Book Blog lesson, and created this blog. If I actually had a high school literature class, and we were actually having a Banned Book Week, I would encourage each student to write something to contribute to the blog. Each student could have their own post to share their feelings about one of the books we read, another challenged or banned book they have read or want to read, or what they think about whether books should be banned or not.
