Kristian Beverly

From Epic Reads

The last week of September is devoted to Banned Books week.
I was going to try to do all horse books, but horse books aren’t on many banned book lists (Yay!). Animal Farm has some horse characters and Sodapop from The Outsiders does mention rodeos, but I felt like that was too much of a stretch.
There are many reasons behind books being challenged. Do I think books should be banned? Nope. Now, there is a huge difference between book levels and challenging. There are certain types of content within some books that I feel should be read by more mature people or else the meaning is lost. The themes of the book would go completely over his or her head. Challenging a book, even though the person is the appropriate maturity/reading level is completely different. Especially trying get books taken out of libraries instead of passing by them. Eck.
While I could just make a list of my favorite books that have been challenged/banned, I decided to list this year’s banned books. This year’s theme was Young Adult/Teen books. I was pretty happy that I’ve read five of the top ten books on the list.

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
2. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi 
3. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
6. Drama, by Raina Telgemeier 
7. Chinese Handcuffs, by Chris Crutcher
8. The Giver, by Lois Lowry 
9. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
10. Looking for Alaska, by John Green 

BANNED VS. CHALLENGED
Challenged Books: Books that people are trying to remove or restrict from schools, libraries, etc.
Banned Books: If a group of people challenge a book and they win, then the book is banned and removed from public spaces like schools, libraries, etc.

(Also, look at my chalkie variation!)