Think of how lonely your high school years would have been without Huck Finn, Hamlet or Frankenstein. And what would millions of children do on Halloween without Harry Potter and his friends?

We take it for granted that we could pick up a Mark Twain novel or a Shakespeare play and be transported to another world, or learn life's lessons from well drawn characters. But the reality is that as long as stories have been in print, there have been people who want them banned.

In the last six years there have been more than 3,000 attempts to have books taken off the shelves of school and public libraries, according to the American Library Association. And that's just the complaints they know about.

"Most challenges are directed at materials that speak to the condition of the human being," says Judith Krug, director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. "Innocuous materials are rarely if ever challenged. What's challenged are books that make a difference and have a meaning to people and their lives.

"And that's one of the reasons that we fight so hard to keep them available and accessible, because they do say something about he condition of the human being."

The ALA is a co-sponsor of the 25th annual "Banned Books Week," which runs from Sept. 23 to Sept. 30, and they have compiled a list of the Top 10 most contested books of this century. Read on to see the list, being made public for the first time by asap.

Banning books is not something from another era or for science fiction -- like Ray Bradbury's chilling "Fahrenheit 451" -- it's taking place today. There was a renewed outcry against "The DaVinci Code" when the film came out this summer. Last year 44 requests to pull a book were successful in the United States, including Tim O'Brien's Vietnam collection, "The Things They Carried," and Nobel winner Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye."

"It always amazes me when people like Toni Morrison or even (John) Steinbeck and (J.D.) Salinger and Maya Angelou are challenged. It's like, come on, these are the classics of American literature," Krug says.

The No. 1 reason in the U.S. for trying to ban a book, according to Krug: sex. Politics and religion once shared the top spot with sex, and thanks to the Harry Potter series, witchcraft, for some, is a new no-no.

Readers can vote for their favorite book on the list at http://www.ala.org/bbooks .

___

The 10 most challenged books of the 21st Century:

1. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

2. "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier

3. The Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

4. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck

5. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

6. "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers

7. "It's Perfectly Normal" by Robie Harris

8. The Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz

9. The Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey

10. "Forever" by Judy Blume

___

HOWIE RUMBERG is an asap reporter based in New York.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.