Sept is Month of the Banned Book
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Celebrate your intellectual freedom... by reading a Banned or Challenged book in the month of September.



Read one of the books off of the American Library Association's (ALA) List of 100 Most Frequently Banned/Challenged of the Past Decade and receive a prize from your local librarians. Find the list here: http://www.ala.org/bbooks...-2000-2009.

Read out and speak up!

Miles City Public Library, 1 S. 10th St., Miles City, MT 59301; Ph: (406) 234-1496; web http://www.MilesCityPublicLibrary.org
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Posted by Jesse Smith (+425) 10 years ago
Wow, I can't believe some of those are banned. Several on that list were REQUIRED when I was in school.



[This message has been edited by Jesse Smith (9/14/2013)]
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Posted by gypsykim (+1556) 10 years ago
I've read a lot of them. I don't get it. With the number of parents I see giving permission for their teens to see "R" rated movies, the 'crap' that's on television and what they see and hear every day, these books are tame. And hey, at least they'd be reading!!
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Posted by Amorette Allison (+12830) 10 years ago
Some of these books make you think. Many parents disapprove of their children trying to think independently. A couple of them mention menstruation, which also scares the bejesus out of some folks.
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Posted by Joe Whalen (+612) 10 years ago
Any chance that "Atlas Shrugged" will make the list soon?
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Posted by MilesCity.com Webmaster (+10054) 10 years ago
More than a bit ironic Fahrenheit 451 is on the list, which for those who don't know... is a novel about a future society that bans books.
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Posted by Sarah Peterson (+374) 10 years ago
We used to do a competition in elementary school called Battle of the Books - teams would read a selection and then compete to answer questions about the books from their list. I can't believe how many of these books were "battle" books! And how many were, indeed, required reading in later years.
Many favorites on this list!
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
"With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be."

"There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."

~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
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Posted by Bridgier (+9547) 10 years ago
A couple of them mention menstruation, which also scares the bejesus out of some folks.

well.... yeah
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Posted by Elizabeth Emilsson (+797) 10 years ago
Many books are banned thanks to Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Books that offer food for thought on values or that may help people with their self esteem. God for bid that we ever think we are better than a lowly worm.
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Posted by Richard Bonine, Jr. (+15599) 10 years ago
Here is some selected reading from a book Dr. Dobson would like to make mandatory reading. When one understands the meanings behind the figurative language, this is R-rated material by most book-banner standards.

Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
behold, you are beautiful!
Your eyes are doves
behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats
leaping down the slopes of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes
that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins,
and not one among them has lost its young.

Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.

Your neck is like the tower of David,
built in rows of stone;[a]
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors.

Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that graze among the lilies.

Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
I will go away to the mountain of myrrh
and the hill of frankincense.

You are altogether beautiful, my love;
there is no flaw in you.

Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;
come with me from Lebanon.
Depart from the peak of Amana,
from the peak of Senir and Hermon,
from the dens of lions,
from the mountains of leopards.

You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.

How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!

Your lips drip nectar, my bride;
honey and milk are under your tongue;
the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.

A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a spring locked, a fountain sealed.

Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates
with all choicest fruits,
henna with nard,
nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
with all trees of frankincense,
myrrh and aloes,
with all choice spices-
a garden fountain, a well of living water,
and flowing streams from Lebanon.

Awake, O north wind,
and come, O south wind!
Blow upon my garden,
let its spices flow.
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Posted by Elizabeth Emilsson (+797) 10 years ago
Oh, Bless you, Richard. The Songs of Solomon are indeed quite racy.
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
The 2012 Banned/Challenged List contains the first Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes mystery A Study in Scarlet (http://www.ila.org/pdf/BB...t_2012.pdf).

And the most recent list, for your perusal (http://www.ila.org/Banned...rtlist.pdf).
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Posted by MilesCity.com Webmaster (+10054) 10 years ago
From one of Hannah's recent FB posts:

Courier-Tribune wrote:
September 16, 2013
County board bans `Invisible Man' from school libraries

RAMSEUR - "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison is banned from the shelves of Randolph County Schools libraries.

By a 5-2 margin, the Randolph County Board of Education voted Monday night, at its regular meeting held at Eastern Randolph High School, to remove all copies of the book from school libraries.

...

The book, originally published in 1952, addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the first half of the 20th century.

It was one of three books from which rising Randleman High School juniors could choose for summer reading for the 2013-14 school year. The others on the list were "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin and "Passing" by Nella Larsen; honors students had to choose two books.

There was little discussion after the board was presented with the Central Services Committee recommendation concerning the parent's complaint about the book. All board members had been supplied with copies of the book last month to read.

McDonald asked if everyone had read the book, stating, "It was a hard read."

Mason said, "I didn't find any literary value." He also objected to the language in the book. "I'm for not allowing it to be available."

...

http://courier-tribune.co...aries.html

To which, I might add:

Wikipedia wrote:
Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...isible_Man
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Posted by Bob Netherton II (+1905) 10 years ago
McDonald asked if everyone had read the book, stating, "It was a hard read."

I'll bet it was.
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Books are very dangerous...


Be wary of politicians who practice censorship...


"Think for yourself and let others do the same."
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Posted by Jack Fairweather (+119) 10 years ago
My great grandmother, an english teacher in the days of one room school houses taught me to read before I was five years old. What an advantage she gave me...What students need to understand is that if you can read an d understand what you read..you can do anything, be anything, go anywhere. Unfortunately, many banned books would teach them exactly that. So...read'em anyway!
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Posted by Elizabeth Emilsson (+797) 10 years ago
When I was teaching grade school. I read aloud from the "Rats from N.I.M.H". The part I loved the best was when one of the rats learned to read. " Once we learned to read, we were Free."
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Posted by Amorette Allison (+12830) 10 years ago
I just reread "Slaughterhouse Five" for the first time since I was in college. Long live Kilgore Trout!
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Posted by Sarah Peterson (+374) 10 years ago
Rereading To Kill a Mockingbird from the banned books shelf at the library!
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Posted by Lincoln (+148) 10 years ago
love this list! fell in love with reading by reading most of these books!

two other banned ones that have a future where no one reads:
A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
and
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.... two of my ultimate favorites

I am reading the Serpent and the Rainbow, surprised its not on there- though I can think of many I don't see that challenge the mind- many by the same authors who made the list! randomness

My favorite on the list has got to be The What's Happening to my Body Book. Let's definitely NOT inform people what is happening to their body!
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
UPDATE (awesome update) on "Invisible Man" banning: a former Randolph County resident arranged for donated copies FREE to all high school students until copies run out.

http://courier-tribune.co...dents.html
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Posted by Elizabeth Emilsson (+797) 10 years ago
We only have one week to reread the banned books. SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME.
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Posted by Amorette F. Allison (+1917) 10 years ago
The Captain Underpants books are often banned because it is a cartoon character in underpants. Because, you know, kids don't know that everyone in the world wears underpants.

It's like the crazy girls who are going around the UK right now exorcising demons caused by casting the spells from the Harry Potter books. They are real spells, the girls say. Right. A spell to repair broken eyeglasses. That's a big seller of Satan's.
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Posted by Wendy Wilson (+6173) 10 years ago
Captain Underpants was required reading in our house. I think I liked them more than my kid did.
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Another UPDATE on the banning of "Invisible Man":

On Wednesday evening, the Randolph County school board in North Carolina 6 to 1 to retract its ban on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at school libraries. In the days after the board took the classic novel about race and identity off library shelves in response to a parent complaint, the decision has drawn fierce criticism and national scrutiny. Vintage, the book's publisher, donated copies to a nearby bookstore to be given away for free to students, and waiting lists for the book grew at local libraries and bookstores. Board member Gary Cook told the Los Angeles Times, "We may have been hammered on this and we may have made a mistake, but at least we're big enough to admit it."
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Posted by Richard Bonine, Jr. (+15599) 10 years ago
I have to ask, (because that's how I roll ) in an age of Smart Phones and Kindle's isn't it becoming kind of hard to ban books? I greatly appreciate Hannah's effort here, but it seems like book banning could become a dying "art". Is a school board really going to tell me that I can't have "The Bowel Movement" by John Crapper or whatever banned book on my electronic device? IMO, this is a very good development!

Discuss...
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Richard asked:
...in an age of Smart Phones and Kindle's isn't it becoming kind of hard to ban books?


It is still VERY easy to make it difficult for people (especially young people) to access books if they are "removed" from library shelves (or removed from digital archives that the library "checks out" to patrons). Young people may not have the funding available to download/purchase a book for a Kindle or smart phone.

The beauty of public libraries in America (and access to materials in a public school library or classroom) is the removal of the financial barrier: items are available for everyone, regardless of social or financial status. Items are there for the all the members of society (free from discrimination). Access to information is truly FREE at the library-level.

Historically, knowledge was guarded and only available for the rich class (many European libraries are still "subscription" or "Members Only" libraries). This was one of the driving reasons behind Jefferson's promotion of public libraries and Carnegie's goal of having a public library in almost every county in America: freedom of access to information.

Banning books allows Person A to make decisions for YOU and YOUR FAMILY. Intellectual freedom does not have a price tag.
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Posted by MilesCity.com Webmaster (+10054) 10 years ago
Internet Archive wrote:
Books are being thrown away, or sometimes packed away, as digitized versions become more available. This is an important time to plan carefully for there is much at stake.

...

A reason to preserve the physical book that has been digitized is that it is the authentic and original version that can be used as a reference in the future. If there is ever a controversy about the digital version, the original can be examined.

...

http://blog.archive.org/2...t-archive/
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