Books in Chains

In today's New Mexican, the generationNext section has an essay by Luke Kuzava about banned books, "Illicit knowledge? Read a banned book this summer and see what the fuss is about". Among the titles he mentions are Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima; The Catcher in the Rye; Of Mice and Men; and other familiar titles. As Pat Hodapp, SFPL's director of libraries, says in the article, "With the amount of books that have been censored across the country, it's not too unlikely that you've read at least one."
       The online version of the article omits a very useful link which Luke gives in the paper story, to the American Library Association's pages about banned and challenged books. ('Challenged' means books someone has asked be removed from the library or school. 'Banned' is when the books are actually removed.) The covers shown below are from their list of the ten most frequently challenged titles in 2004. Looking at authors rather than titles, the fourth most frequently challenged author last year was Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Posted by pch