Banned Books Week: Highlights

American Library Association’s 30th annual Banned Books Week is quickly coming to an end, and everywhere we turn, there are discussions and opinions on challenged books.
According to ALA, “Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read....it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.
We, at Scarletta Press, think it is important to support the written word and people’s right to choose what they will and will not read. After all, if you don’t agree with a book, you don’t need to read it. That doesn’t mean that other people shouldn’t be allowed to.
So to celebrate the right to read, we thought we’d put together a list of some of the highlights of Banned Book Week so far from across the internet. Feel free to share your own links, photos, or personal stories below. We want to know what things you’re enjoying this week.
First off, here is a highlighted list from ALA of the most often challenged titles. Some of them may surprise you.

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

A Rating System for YA Books: Yea or Nay?

A few days ago there was an article from the U.S. News and World Report about the issue of rating young adult books for mature content. According to a new report from researcher Sarah Coyne at Bingham Young University, the top 40 best-selling children's books on the New York Times list between June 22 and July 6, 2008 had over 1,500 profane words. Because of this, she suggests that a rating system be put into place to warn parents about the books they're letting their children read.

The article quotes Beth Yoke, from ALA, saying, “Books can be a safe way for young people to explore edgier, sensitive, or complicated topics, and they provide parents the opportunity to help their teens grow and understand these kinds of sensitive issues.” She argues that if a large, outside organization were allowed to rate books based on mature content, it would end up forcing authors to edit their books so as not to be placed in an R-rated category. It’s also pointed out that some books, just because of their subject, would automatically be placed in an adult category. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines is an important book on drug use that by no means encourages teen readers to use, but is still full of profanity. Any effort to censor books like this for content would be to portray the situations inaccurately, and thereby lessen their impact.