s/o Name Your Favorite/Most Personally Influential Banned Book(s)

yoopermom

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I went through a rebel phase in my late teens and decided to read as many as possible (but had already read quite a few without even knowing it :).)

Here are the ALA links for the 2000s http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/top-100-bannedchallenged-books-2000-2009 and the 1990s http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/100-most-frequently-challenged-books-1990–1999 and challenged classics http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics

For me:
all of the Judy Blume books
Grapes of Wrath

For DS22:
Captain Underpants
Pullman's His Dark Materials series

Yours?

Terri
 
Some of the books on the lists are really surprising!

My favorites would have to be Harry Potter and the Steinbeck novels.
(I've read quite a few on the lists. I actually only read The Bluest Eye BECAUSE it was banned, lol. I'd like to read some more off the banned list now!)
 
Half of my library is from the kids, which are half of lists. lol. One of my dd's is a creative writing major.

Of course I had all the Judy Blume books, which I NO LONGER have, first editions. (thanks mom).

I have been meaning to read Vonnegut. One of these days....
 
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I’ve read quite a bit from that list. I don’t remember any of them being challenged or banned but I do remember having to get my parents signature and $4 to read Catcher in the Rye in 8th grade. Great book but my English teacher was off his rocker so the lesson could have been better.

From that list, The Outsiders. Hands down my favorite book even today. I was an avid reader but S.E. Hinton made me want to WRITE. Still one of my heroes.
 


I’m in my late 20s. I adore Harry Potter, Brave New World, & Handmaid’s Tale.
 
Harry Potter, The Giver, Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Time To Kill, Of Mice and Men, The Outsiders. Probably others would have to compare the list to mine and Mom"s library of books.

Dd had all the Junie B Jones books, DS had all the Goosebumps books when they were kids.

A Time to Kill was probably the book that while reading made me feel the most affected. I cried so much throughout that book. Love John Grisham's writing.

Harry Potter is just the book that takes me to another world. It a series that I can read again and again and again.
 


Favorite is Sophie’s Choice. I have a signed copy by Styron.

While it's a wonderful book (and movie), it is in my top ten of "gave me nightmares for life". Give me supernatural horror anyday, but the reality of having to choose (shudder)....

Terri
 
While it's a wonderful book (and movie), it is in my top ten of "gave me nightmares for life". Give me supernatural horror anyday, but the reality of having to choose (shudder)....

Terri

Even though it is a novel, there are some stories from the Holocaust that did happen. I found a story where the mother could stay with her sons, while the daughter was sent to another place, the mother chose the daughter and both were murdered. I am sure that there was plenty of those type of stories. The one I heard from Styron was that a Jewish mother had to make that kind of choice, she survived but had gone insane.
 
It always surprises me to see picture books on these lists, but then I remember my first elementary school assignment, where the previous library staff person had used white out to put a "diaper" on the main character in "In the Night Kitchen" by Sendak.

Terri
 
What people can't see is - how is it going to be important in a few hundred years? A lot of this isn't. Its Christopher Marlowe questions at that point.
 
Boy, they want to ban all the classics worth reading, huh?

A few that I'd count among my favorites surprised me: The Giver, The Outsiders, A Light in the Attic (really?!?), Are You There God, Its Me Margaret?. And quite a few didn't: The Handmaid's Tale, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World, anything by Hemingway...
 
It was never banned, but at the time many book stores refused to carry Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls. Tame today, but it was considered scandalous and smutty back in the 1960's.
 
I don't think I've ever read a banned book or at least I didn't know it was banned. I would probably say the Bible since it was/is banned in certain atheist and Muslim countries.
 
The book that influenced me the most from those lists would have to be A Wrinkle in Time. I had always loved reading, but I remember being in 2nd or 3rd grade and just becoming so completely absorbed in the world that L'Engle created. I've adored getting lost in books ever since. As for my favorite from the lists? I can't pick just one! It's not very surprising that I became a school librarian. :)
 
My most favorite (besides Narnia books) was A Wrinkle in Time.

Others from that list...
Huck Finn
To Kill a Mockingbird
Goosebumps (read so many of these)
Scary Stories (I first read it in 3rd grade and I think I'm still scarred from that, lol)
 

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