Banned Books Week will be celebrated September 26–October 3, 2009. The ALA encourages librarians to “challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment” as stated in the Library Bill of Rights, and since 1990 the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has compiled information on banned and challenged books.
If you’d like to share some of these banned and challenged books with your students, audiobooks are a great way to spark classroom discussion. Below (in nor particular order) is a partial list of some banned and challenged books (culled from ALA’s many lists) Recorded Books offers unabridged on audio. For the record, we have actually been asked in the past if we offer an abridged version of To Kill a Mockingbird (to avoid certain controversial words). Our recording is, as always, complete and unabridged! Free guides for some of these books are available at http://www.recordedbooks.com/guides. Have you read or listened to any of the below banned books? What is your favorite banned book?
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous/Beatrice Sparks
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (FREE lesson plans with audio! See Lesson 1 and Lesson 2.)
Taming the Star Runner by S.E. Hinton
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Summer of My German Soldier Bette Greene
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Ulysses by James Joyce An AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
1984 by George Orwell
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Native Son by Richard Wright
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson An AudioFIle Earphones Award Winner & ALSC Notable Recording
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney
For a few additional links on book censorship, see our previous post: School Libraries and Censorship.
Filed under: Audiobooks and Education, K-12 Education | Tagged: ALA, banned books, censorship, libraries, reading |
Recorded Books Blog 
Even the subject of banned books is a touchy one in elementary schools. Just bringing it up can cause more turmoil than some librarians and classroom teachers may want to deal with. However, the 5 freedoms of the first amendment are important and the discussion of banned books can go a long way to help teach this important democratic principle.
[…] to a banned book this week. See a list of some banned books available on audio from Recorded Books HERE and check out some links on censorship […]