Banned Books Week

2. Treasure Your
Freedom to
Read!
Banned Books Week is an opportunity to
educate students about one of our most
precious freedoms in Democracy and the
role of libraries.

3. First… A bit about the First
Amendment to the United States
Constitution

5. Intellectual freedom is:
• the ability to express and explore diverse opinions
• Right to seek information
• Right to choose information from all points of view

6. Freedom of speech and press
require an understanding that
others have different opinions
and ideas.
However, throughout world
history, those with different
ideas have been sought out and
silenced.

7. Books and libraries have been
burned as a method of
controlling thought and
knowledge throughout world
history.

9. In 1943, during World War
II, the U.S. Office of War
Information used this poster
to help Americans
understand why we were
fighting.

10. • A CHALLENGE is an attempt to remove or restrict
materials, based upon the objections of a person or
group.
• A BANNING is the removal of those materials.

11. Why are books challenged?
Books are usually challenged with the best intentions—to
protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and
information.
Others are challenged because they offend someone.

12. A book that has been banned
has been removed from the
shelf. All readers are denied
access to the material.

13. The Lorax
by Dr. Seuss has been banned for
criminalizing the forestry industry.

14. Harry Potter
by J.K. Rowling has been challenged
and banned for promoting witchcraft.

15. Goosebumps
by R. L. Stine is
often challenged
in libraries for
their sometimes-violent content.

16. A Light in the
Attic
Shel Silverstein's collection of rhymes
and whimsical drawings was
challenged at one school because it
"encourages children to break dishes
so they won't have to dry them."
Another elementary school banned it
in 1986 because some of its poems
were said to encouraged children to
be disobedient."

18. Bridge to
Terabithia
by Katherine Paterson is a Newbery
Award winner, banned due to a
discussion of death, disrespect of
adults, and an elaborate fantasy
world which was might lead to
confusion.

19. How to Eat
Fried Worms
by Thomas Rockwell was banned
because it encouraged children to
partake in socially unacceptable
activities. Eating worms, which is
perceived as being disgusting and not
socially acceptable, concerned
parents. They argued that this book
encourages disgusting antisocial
behavior.

20. Where the Wild
Things Are
by Maurice Sendak was banned for
heavily in the south because parents
thought it to be a form of abuse that
Max was “sent to bed without his
supper.”

21. Junie B. Jones
by Barbara Parks challenged
because of its use of bad grammar
and language.

22. Captain
Underpants
by David Pilkey, was
challenged for
encouraging children
to disobey grownups and for
crude language.

24. “Parents-and only parents-have
the right and the responsibility to
restrict the access of their
children- and only their children-to
library resources”
Free Access to Libraries for Minors,
an interpretation of the American
Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights

26. Although many of the books
featured here were targets of
attempted bannings, most of them
were not banned thanks to the
efforts of librarians who maintain
them in their collections.