Celebrate Banned Books Week!

I love Banned Books Week - but I'm a complete and utter book nerd and reader.  Banned Books Week was created in 1982 by a - shocker - librarian and now has the American Library Association as its biggest sponsor. It draws attention to books that are banned and challenged in the United States. This year, the week runs from September 22-September 28.

What I love is that this holiday draws attention to a lot of things that I absolutely value.  It celebrates individuality and the ability to choose what you consume, without the government or some other entity or person telling you that you can't consume that. It allows you to consume anything, even the unpopular things.  It helps to foster communication - what better way to talk about values, ideas, cultures and other things that are important to you than to talk about them in the form of books and what you've read?! It also stresses the value of having many different viewpoints and fosters the ability to think critically about those viewpoints.

Some of my favorite banned books include:  The Handmaid's Tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Bridge to Terebithia and The Catcher in the Rye.

Happy reading!