Books to Read for Banned Books Week
Happy Banned Books Week!
For years, I’ve advocated against book bans. Click here to read my 2017 "Banned Books Week" post and here for my 2018 "Banned Books Week" post and my 2019 “Banned Books Week” post. But this year, it hits different. For the first time since starting this blog, I received hateful pushback to my advocacy against banning books. Book bans are not the answer. I found this series of Instagram stories helpful, if you’re unsure why banning books is wrong.
Banned Books Week is an annual event that celebrates the freedom to read and draws attention to the harms of censorship. This event typically takes place in the last week of September and encourages readers, libraries, and bookstores to challenge censorship by reading and discussing books that have been banned or challenged in the past. The event started in the United States in 1982, in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries. Banned Books Week highlights the importance of the First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of speech and the press, and reinforces the idea that everyone should have the right to choose what they read.
I also found the podcast below about how the current push to ban books in order to “protect children” is misleading.
The Top 5 Most Banned Books in Schools this Year
1. Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, 15 bans
Books to Read for Banned Books Week
2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.
Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
2. Flamer by Mike Curato, 15 bans
Books to Read for Banned Books Week
Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in Flamer, his debut graphic novel, telling a difficult story with humor, compassion, and love.
"This book will save lives." ―Jarrett J. Krosoczka, author of National Book Award Finalist Hey, Kiddo
I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both.
I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe.
It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes―but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.
3. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, 13 bans
Books to Read for Banned Books Week
Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love in this #1 New York Times bestselling novel from Ellen Hopkins.
"When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival."
Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching...for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don't expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words "I love you" are said for all the wrong reasons.
Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story -- a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, "Can I ever feel okay about myself?"
A brilliant achievement from New York Times best-selling author Ellen Hopkins -- who has been called "the bestselling living poet in the country" by mediabistro.com -- Tricks is a book that turns you on and repels you at the same time. Just like so much of life.
4. The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault, 12 bans
Books to Read for Banned Books Week
The stunning graphic novel adaptation • A must-read and collector’s item for fans of “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times).
Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.
Provocative, startling, prophetic, The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a global phenomenon. With this beautiful graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s modern classic, beautifully realized by artist Renée Nault, the terrifying reality of Gilead has been brought to vivid life like never before.
5. Crank (Crank Series) by Ellen Hopkins, 12 bans
Books to Read for Banned Books Week
The #1 New York Times bestselling tale of addiction—the first in the Crank trilogy—from master poet Ellen Hopkins.
Life was good
before I
met
the monster.
After,
life
was great,
At
least
for a little while.
Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble.
Then, Kristina meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul—her life.
