Ban the Books! Oh, yeah, that works...

The concept of banning books cracks me up. It's hysterical. Obviously, whoever came up with the concept never actually met a child or teen, or talked to one at any length. I can tell you definitively that every single thing my parents told me not to do, I did. If this wasn't a family show here, I'd run down the list, but it is. Not to mention most of them were illegal and possibly punishable by fines, jail time, or deportation. Like that stopped me.

The primary contraband of the girls in my middle school wasn't drugs or alcohol...it was V.C. Andrews. One girl would be assigned "lookout" at the cafeteria table, while another read particularly entralling passages out loud. This wasn't the first group of 7th graders these teachers had dealt with, and they could spot a shiny, cutout cover and an overworn spine clear across five tables.

I was an avid reader, but these were the only non-assigned books I ever saw come out of anyone else's backpack. Other than Go Ask Alice, that is. A rather free-thinking teacher of ours assigned that in Reading. Only time you never caught anyone trying to nap in class.

But sex, drugs and rock n' roll aren't the main reason books are banned, at least in my opinion. It's ideas.

Take a look at the banned authors list. Maya Angelou. Steinbeck. Shakespeare. Benjamin Franklin. Kurt Vonnegut. Great thinkers who encouraged people to look at things from a different viewpoint, to challenge the accepted ways of thinking, the ways pressed on them by the government and the church. People are scared of thoughts, because thoughts turn into actions, and actions can become revolution. Martin Luther (not King, Jr.) nailed a paper to a church door, and it not only changed the course of Western civilization, but was also used almost 500 years later to fuel the Nazi's war on Jews. Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, started another revolution. If it weren't for his pamphlet, we Americans might still be paying for our morning coffee with British pounds.

Librarians, teachers, and parents will use excuses, like language, sexual content, etc. for banning a book, but if you look more closely, actually open the book and read, you'll find those few scintillating passages mostly obscured by the revolutionary thoughts they inspire.

In one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which, along with its fellows, has spent a fair amount of time on certain schools' banned lists), Hermione is thrilled when a magazine containing an inflammatory interview with Harry is made contraband by a professor. Harry is confused, until Hermione says, " If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!"

So grab yourself a banned book, and Viva La Revolution!

Jacquelyn Sylvan is the author of Surviving Serendipity, a YA Fantasy novel. Click below to get your copy...before someone bans it!

Ban This Book - I Dare You!

Being one who talks a lot, I can't fathom anything beyond free speech. And book banning? Yes, while some books have no useful purpose other than to cause anarchy, harm others, or create chaos, it's the other books I'm more concerned with - one person's banned book may be someone else's fun read.

Take The Witch Tree, a perfect little Halloween read. It's a dark little tale. A story of man vs. nature, good vs. evil. There're some yucky parts, too, perfect for a horror tale. Definitely not some people's cup of tea. I like to read scary stuff. I grew up with Stephen King. I like scary movies. I like to write scary stories sometimes too.

So, maybe it's not your cup of tea or coffee. I understand, but I hope it is! If you want to ban it, however, go ahead. It'll only make it more desirable. So, someone ban it, please! (Hint-hint!)

Excerpt from THE WITCH TREE by C.A. Verstraete:

What he noticed first was the sound.

Jimmy Grayson lifted his head from the grimy pillow, stared at the open window, and cringed. The onslaught seemed to come from every direction. He placed a hand over his ear to try to block it out. No such luck. High-pitched screeches, nonstop chattering, the endless wall of freaking sound was making him crazy.

In one swift motion, he threw off the dingy, worn quilt, catapulted from the bed, and rushed to the window. "Shut up!" he screamed, not caring how unhinged he sounded. "Shut the hell up!"

It stopped.

Ahhh. A deep sigh escaped him; an appreciation for the quiet filled him. He exhaled in a soft whoosh of air. The muscles in his neck relaxed as the tension left. His eyes closed almost of themselves-then popped open as the cacophony started up again.
The endless, unendurable shrieks, chirps, and chatters surrounded him from all sides like a blanket. With each passing second, the sound from hundreds of blackbirds increased in volume.

** I dare you to read on! Turn the lights low, or fire up the laptop and read THE WITCH TREE. Oh, don’t forget to lock the door!

* Buy THE WITCH TREE at Fictionwise

Banning the Bat

I was sitting at a book signing, my books spread out on a table in front of me. A boy walked by, maybe twelve years old, thirteen... I can't tell ages of kids much anymore. His mother was standing back a bit.

Anyway, he was drawn to the covers of my Adventures of Guy series. The book covers are lively and cartoonish, and they often are mistaken as books for the younger'uns.

But my Guy series is filled with a bit more mature of a theme, and as you know I don't like to corrupt the critters (It's okay to corrupt everyone else).

"Actually, that's for a bit older crowd," I said, and then I gestured towards my new book, Fang Face, which was written for his age. "You might like this one more."

He reached out, but before he could take it, his mother grabbed his arm and pulled him away. As she hurried him away to safety, she shot over her shoulder, "We're Christians, we don't support that kind of book."

My mouth dropped open.

Not like that's anything new, but mostly because I'm talking.

But this time no words came out. I was stunned.

She obviously took offense at the topic of Fang Face... vampires... and somehow felt vampires were a threat to her religious views, and that it might taint her vulnerable, young, sensitive son.

Even more, judging from the sneer on her face, she obviously took offense to me, as I am the creator of the book that so offended her sensibilities.

She knows nothing of my religious views.

She knows nothing of my moral compass

She obviously knows nothing of vampires either, because if she'd have given it a thought, she would have realized that the best way to fight a vampire is ... a cross.

You know, a cross. She was probably wearing one.

So how does this diminish her religion? What possible offense can she take to the symbol she holds so dear being held up as the bastion of protection to the threat from the dark side, the undead?

Most of you who know me know I'm rarely at a loss for words. But it wouldn't have helped me to argue with this lady. Obviously, she uses her religion as a platform to lift herself above other people. She uses it in a way not intended. She could have hustled him away without making a loud moral pronouncement on me.

Will this help her son as he casts about for his own moral compass? Will her strict indoctrination lock him into her feeling on the world, or will he turn away from her, rebel and push away from her black and white views on evil?

Will she drive him to seek out the very thing she tries to shelter him from? Forbidden books. Banned books.

There's a reason that some writers try to write books that will be banned. They are popular. People want to read them.

So bring it on, lady. Get my book banned. And I'll see you on the Best Seller lists!

Norm

www.fangface.homestead.com
www.normcowie.com

(exciting day today, It's my anniversary ... 24 years!)

Daily Thoughts 10/1/2009

Hemingway's Desk From Key West

Daily Thoughts October 1, 2009

Today is another quiet smooth day. I handed in my monthly report today, did a little weeding, and made sure the displays were updated.

My colleagues also redid most of the displays today with banned books week book displays. I was not part of this set of planning. There was a display on censorship, a display on teen banned books, and a display of adult banned books in the front entranceway. It was very thematic.

I am still reading The Cost of Bad Behavior. The book is describing the cost of incivility to customer service right now. It describes how incivility can drive away customers and even affect stock prices in companies. A rude conference call with stock analysts does not lead to good corporate performance.

There is a very interesting article on Book Industry Standard and Classification versus Dewey classification for libraries. I have never seen BISAC in a library, but I have visited many bookstores with this classification scheme. It is far better for browsability, but it can fail when looking for very specific books. Dewey is much more granular than BISAC. I really liked the idea of partial categories for books using BISAC and individual dewey labels for specificity.

I am a big fan of merchandising for the purpose of increasing circulation. The issue with breaking the collection into smaller categories is that there are many more places to look for a book. Also there is a lot more work in processing materials. At the same time, it creates very nice browsable categories and increases circulation. We merchandise our displays; pulling displays for career books, graphic novels, and other categories. Also our "new arrivals" section is merchandised into romance, science fiction, mystery, audiobooks, dvds, and fiction books.

Building separate special collections is a big task. We do have separate sections for African American fiction, mystery, audiobooks, job information center books, short stories, and romance paperbacks. There is also a separate Local History room, law collection, multicultural reference collection, reference collection, and periodicals collection.

I enjoyed reading the article quite a bit. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698264.html

Challenged

Pam's terrific post on Huck Finn got me thinking. I'll bet there are many other challenged books that would surprise people. It's not just small towns from a decade ago doing the banning, either, as in the movie Footloose (Does anyone still know that movie?) - I get several challenges each year on materials for teens in the library. While I do respond in a nice way to patrons who complain, I have not yet removed an item, and am lucky to have support in that decision from my director. But - lots of school and public library folks lose their jobs over this kind of thing - even today!

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom publishes a list each year of the most challenged books from the year before, and the reasons the books are challenged. Here's the most recent one - how many have you read?

The 10 most challenged books of 2007 (ranked in order) reflect a range of themes, and are:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence
3. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language
4. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman Reasons: Religious Viewpoint
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain Reasons: Racism
6. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,
7. TTYL, by Lauren Myracle Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou Reasons: Sexually Explicit
9. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

There's Huck Finn at #5! This is the first year in a while that Harry Potter has not made the list, and I think Golden Compass took its place with the popularity of the movie. I'd be surprised if Twilight did not make the list for 2008. I've found that tell folks a book is challenged only makes people want to read it more!

-Amy Alessio

Editor, Missing: A Mysterious Gathering of Tales (Echelon Press, 2008)

Afternoon Thoughts

Afternoon Thoughts

This morning I filled our display for Banned Books Week 9/23/2008-9/28/2008. Most of the books had been taken out by patrons. We make it a point to allow patrons to take out books in our display if they ask for them. One of the major points of displaying books is to increase the amount of books being used. Two of the books were The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Color Purple. I believe banning books lessens freedom and reduces democracy in many cases. I can see red sometimes over the causes which people want things banned for.

I've taken a little bit of time to also prepare for the poetry open microphone this afternoon. I've printed out some of my poems and am ready to read some of them. I also have picked out some poetry books to display. Right now, they are on a cart in the back office. I usually pick out a mix of popular poets; Nikki Giovanni, Allen Ginsberg, Daniel Berrigan, Diane Wakoski and anthologies; From Totems to Hip Hop and others. I also try to include some poetry from France, China, Arabia, and different places around the world.

The juice and cookies are in the refrigerator next to the community room. I am hoping that they have the new microphone for the reading. They promised they would buy it today, but they are having some payment issues right now.... It is a minor frustration. The layout is ready.

I also picked out two books from the new books section to look at. I don't read everything that I pick out. The first book is Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. John Scalzi writes in the Old Man's War universe. This book is military science fiction. The other book which I am looking at is Sinner A Paradise Novel by Ted Dekker.

I did my short program. Not many people came. I find this very frustrating. Programming is not my strong point, nor is outreach. It is not something which I like doing. No one else is willing. It is very frustrating. I would much rather be working with the books and reference. I am also very good with doing displays, ordering, and materials.

I worked out my frustration a bit by sorting through the donations. I've found five books which are new and acceptable, all of them are 2007 titles by popular authors which should be added to the collection. I'll probably be going through the donations tomorrow. I really like doing this. It helps me release tension. It also reminds me of when I used to go through garage sales and flea markets to find old and valuable books. It is a kind of meditation exercise for me. I can concentrate completely on sorting through books and evaluating them for currency, condition, and relevance to our collection. The first thing I look for is condition.

Morning Thoughts

La Censure by George Lafosse c 1874

Morning Thoughts

I am not happy with the publisher Chelsea Green's decision to limit sales of the book Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency to Amazon.com for the first week of the release. This shows a disregard for openness in competition in the book industry. It also restricts people's choices of where to purchase books. In some ways, I am not a fan of Amazon's practices in selling books. I think it was a bad decision on the part of the publisher.

http://news.bookweb.org/6245.html

In a similar vein, September 27- October 4, 2008 is banned book week. There is a site up for booksellers and libraries http://bannedbooksweek.org/ . It shows one of my favorite books on the site, Maurcice Sendak In The Night Kitchen.

We have six of the ten Most Banned Books of 2007. Most are young adult titles or classics. I don't know why they want to ban teenage books so much. I put up a small display of the six books. I am going to try and get the other four as we go forward this month.

I am up to page 200 of Wikinomics. It is getting even more complicated. Wikinomics is writing about mashups, combining two or more sites to create a third sites. For example, you might combine google maps with the location of vacation rentals to create a new kind of information-- maps to vacation rentals.

I also took a break again and started reading Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. I especially like Pepper, the main character who has been in all the novels. Pepper is the essence of being beat down and still going. I also like the new enemy, space zombies. They are a lot of fun to read about. I also like the continuity of setting. The Azteca even though they lose their alien masters, still remain a coherent culture in the novels. They proclaim that the aliens were false gods and become a democracy led by a council.

Today, I plan on doing some weeding of the business books. I still have quite a bit more to do with this.