September 24-30 is Banned book week. The week that American Library Association releases their top 10 challenged books of the last year and we talk about censorship. A topic that has been getting a lot of talk recently. Anyway, so why do books get challenged? ALA has this helpful infograph to help us out.
No surprise that most of the content that people object to have to do with sex and LGBT lifestyles. Violence and offensive language is also a big one but nothing seems to get people uptight then their poor innocent children reading about having sex or Gay people. THE HORROR! So who are challenging. THe ALA has another infograph to help us out.
And what are the most challenged books of 2016?
Top Ten for 2016
Out of 323 challenges recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom
- This One Summer written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki
Reasons: challenged because it includes LGBT characters, drug use and profanity, and it was considered sexually explicit with mature themes - Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier
Reasons: challenged because it includes LGBT characters, was deemed sexually explicit, and was considered to have an offensive political viewpoint - George written by Alex Gino
Reasons: challenged because it includes a transgender child, and the “sexuality was not appropriate at elementary levels” - I Am Jazz written by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, and illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas
Reasons: challenged because it portrays a transgender child and because of language, sex education, and offensive viewpoints - Two Boys Kissing written by David Levithan
Reasons: challenged because its cover has an image of two boys kissing, and it was considered to include sexually explicit LGBT content - Looking for Alaska written by John Green
Reasons: challenged for a sexually explicit scene that may lead a student to “sexual experimentation” - Big Hard Sex Criminals written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Chip Zdarsky
Reason: challenged because it was considered sexually explicit - Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread written by Chuck Palahniuk
Reasons: challenged for profanity, sexual explicitness, and being “disgusting and all around offensive” - Little Bill (series) written by Bill Cosby and and illustrated by Varnette P. Honeywood
Reason: challenged because of criminal sexual allegations against the author - Eleanor & Park written by Rainbow Rowell
Reason: challenged for offensive language
Let’s not forget that books like Harry Potter, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Where’s Waldo? have all been on this list before. So go read a banned book. Don’t let ideas go to waste.
This was a lot of fun to read and I really want to play Warcross. Marie Lu or someone make that happen! Emika Chen is a hacker and bounty hunter. Her father died when she was eleven and learned how to hack while in foster care. She admires Hideo Tanaka, the creator of Warcross because he created Warcross when he was younger then she was and now at 21 owns his own company and a billionaire. Emika’s life is not going so well. She has less then $13 to her name and is facing eviction due to being 3 months behind in rent. In a moment of desperation she hacked in during the opening ceremony of the Warcross Championships. The next day she is on a plane to Tokyo and is hired by Hideo to track down a hacker named Zero. Emika goes under cover as a player in the games so she can track down Zero and figure out who he is and what he is trying to do. Emika is smart and quickly figures out that one of her own teammates is working with Zero. She tells her findings to Hideo and because this is a YA novel, sparks fly because again YA novel, Hideo is hot! I figured out who Zero was about halfway through the books but the beauty of it, it didn’t spoil the ending. There are secrets in the game of Warcross that no matter how much a character opens up, we still don’t know all the facts. This book was fast paced and full of twists and turns. I do hope that in the next book that we get to know more about Emika’s teammates Asher, Roshan, Hammy and Ren because I feel like we just scratched the surface of who they are. I’m really interested in seeing where Emika goes now that she knows the truth of what happened but is not really sure that it’s truly a bad thing. I don’t want to say too much because it will spoil the ending but it will start some conversations. So yes, go read it.
There are so many great quotes from Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands that it needed a post of it’s own. Serene-Heart-in the-Chaos-of-Battle has the best quotes. In Other Lands takes many tropes and turns them on their head. One is gender roles. In Serene’s Elven culture, women Elves take on more of what we in the human world would consider male roles. This often brings up hilarious misunderstandings and some hard truths. Here are just a couple
**Spoiler Alert**
I have missed my sassy Cajun, Nick and his friends. Eight books in and boy that boy has been through a lot. This is the last book in the Chronicles of Nick but not really as it’s lead in to a spin-off series, I guess? I’m not really sure how I feel about it. First, the book was fun and zippy. Just like the other books in the series, it’s no-stop from the beginning to end. It’s fast paced that I had to slow myself down or I would have read it all in one sitting. Nick’s son, Cyprian Malachai has come back from the future to make sure that Nick stays on the path to destroy the world. In doing so, he frames Nick for the murders of his former friends that kicked off the whole series. That plot line is actually a nonentity in the book itself as it’s quickly resolved but it does lead to Nick start to understand what is really going and how to stop it. The one thing that has separated Nick from the all the Malachai’s before him is that he was loved by his mother and he has the loyalty of his friends. Cyprian makes it clear that one of the reasons he hates Nick is that he is well liked while Cyprian is not. This seems kinda weak to me but who am I to judge. I’m sure we will get more in the Shadows of Fire series that will feature both Cyprian and Nick. So how does Nick defeat his foe. Obviously major spoilers so if you want to read more, check under the cut.
2 Women, So Many Books 