Top 5 Wednesday: Banned Books I've Read

Luckily I've never had to worry about someone telling me that I couldn't read something. I feel sorry for the people that are so afraid of ideas that they seek to limit what books people can read, especially their children. To be honest, if I were a child and told something was banned, that would make me much more likely to want to read it.

Looking over The ALA's Frequently Challenge Books of 2014 List I realized that I had read more of them than I thought. From that list and some others available through that website, I thought I'd share my top 5 banned books that I've read, in no particular order.

I was surprised to see this on the list for one of the reasons that was given for the challenge. I understand the nudity, the sexually explicit content, but the challenge reason that threw me was anti-family. Anyone who has read this knows that this is so far from anti-family as to be hilarious. Marko and Alana are fleeing their homeworlds because of their family, so that they can raise their daughter in peace.

Another family that is lovingly rendered. The illustrations were very pretty and I think it is a useful story to tell children if they happen to have questions about different types of families. According to the challenges listed against this book, it is supposed to be promoting the homosexual agenda. Well then, every book about a "typical" family is propaganda for that sort of dynamic. Who cares? It is a children's storybook that the kids will like because, wait for it, it has cute animals and it's easy to read.

Okay, yes, the series does get darker as it goes on, but that is because life gets darker. Harry admittedly has a few more difficulties than the average teenager. If you take his challenges though, and boil them down to their base meaning, he isn't so different, so unrelateable, that people reading his legacy won't find something in it that will guide them through their troubles. 

I haven't the foggiest idea why this book is on the Top 100 Banned/Challenged List 2000-2009, but I do remember liking it a whole lot when I was a teenager. This was back when I first started getting into books with a fantasy element, in this case werewolves. It was a suitable entry into the genre: not too fantastical (language, setting, etc.), not too much to get used to. It was a girl's story of growing up different and that, at the time, was what I needed the most.

I remember this being one of the few summer reading assignments that I actually enjoyed in high school. It showed me that there was power in standing up and you have to stand up for what you believe to be right, even in the face of the consequences.

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