“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” — Judy Blume
Today marks the official start of Banned Books Week. Why don’t you celebrate your freedom to read by picking one up this week and reading it? You know you want to. . . Your rebellious side wants you to 🙂
I was searching Google to find the lists of banned and challenged books for my “Banned Books Week” display and, lucky me, I happened upon this article:
Libraries and schools throughout the country are ready once again to observe Banned Books Week. It’s that special time each year when some in the library profession point an accusing finger at parents, especially Christians or conservatives who might dare to question the value or appropriateness of certain materials available to youth. For 25 years since its inception, Banned Books Week has been warning America: “Beware of the ignorance and repression of censors! They will deprive us all of valuable knowledge and freedom.”
Just to set the record straight, Library selection committes are not “systematically purging libraries of any conservative or serious Christian viewpoints and instead, loading the shelves with left-wing propaganda and pornography.” That is just the most ridiculous thing I have ever read in my life. Actually, at my library, we have more books aimed toward a Christian audience than we do for any other religions. The Wiccans are kind of screwed in that department because most definately don’t carry the same number of books directed toward thier religion. So please. Don’t tell me we are “purging Christan viewpoints.”
And furthermore, as crazy as it sounds, many of us liberal librarians actually ARE Christians. I know, crazy, isn’t it?
I made the mistake of looking around at that website a little bit. Not the whole site, just the things in the sidebar. Frankly, I don’t know how they can claim to be Christian. Just go check it out yourself. I mean, talk about hate-filled.
Banned Books week is coming up at the end of September! I just voted for my favorite Challenged or Banned book which is Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. It was a hard call, though. There are many great works of literature that are being challenged all the time by people who don’t understand the meaning of Freedom to Read.
What’s your favorite banned book? Go vote here at ALA’s Banned Books Week webpage.
Along these lines, I was helping a young man today find books similar to Harry Potter or the Chronicles of Narnia. I showed him two of my fave trilogies: His Dark Materials and The Bartemaeus Trilogy. (Both of them EXCLLENT btw). As I was explaining the Batemaeus story and plot I was totally getting vibed by a guy standing near us. The story revolves around a boy magician who conjurs up Bartimaeus, an infamous djinni Bartimaeus. I couldn’t think of the word, djinni so to discribe Bartimaeus I was using the work demon (which is kind of what he is in a very general way). Boy. Was I getting some dirty looks shot at me.
The strangest thing happened to me last night when I was dreaming. It’s actually quite creepy.
I had a scary dream last night. I can’t remember the plot of it, if there was one. The significant part was that there were these ghosts that were hanging around me and my co-workers that I couldn’t see but one of my co-workers could see. For some reason, in my dream, we were calling them homeless. I don’t  know why. But really, they were ghosts.
So the scary part happened when my co-worker looked at me and said, “Monica there’s one grabbing your hand!” As soon has he said this I could feel it and then I saw the hand grabbing mine. The flesh on the hand was rotting and dead-looking. This made me start screaming in my dream, which in turn, made me scream out loud. Raf woke up and started waking me up, realizing I was having a bad dream. As I was waking up I opened my eyes and saw hovering above my bed, above raf and I, one of the demon-things from my dream. It was holding on to both of our hands and as I stared at it it looked into my eyes. As I kept waking up it just kind of dissolved into thin air.
Raf asked me what the dream was about and I didn’t want to tell him last night because I didn’t want to freak him out. I ended up telling him about it this morning and he told me that he had the same experience with a similar creature hovering over our bed as he was waking up from a bad dream. His creature looked more mummifed. The skin was intact and preserved. Mine looked like the skin was rotting off of the body and you could see its bones.
It was very scary.
I had quite the exciting morning. I was cutting open a box of tofu and snipped the tinest corner of my left ring finger off. It bled all over the house. And we were out of bandaids. I finally found one in the first aid kit. it was a ginormous band-aid but did the job. Actually it was probably best for the job since it was big enough to sop up all of the blood. I’m grossing myself out right now typing this.
Anyway it still hurts. I prolly should go get stitches but I’m not going to.
