Happy Banned Books Week! Featuring All-Too-Common Comic Book Censorship

September 21-27 is Banned Books Week, a week dedicated to
promoting awareness of censorship issues nationwide. This year’s
spotlight is on challenges to comic books.

Reason TV interviewed Charles Brownstein, executive director of
the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, about today’s censorship and the
history of challenges to the literary medium. Watch above or click
on the link below for video, full text, supporting links,
downloadable versions, and more Reason TV clips. And here’s some
more information on Banned Books Week:

Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual
celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and
bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of
censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a
variety of events. The 2014 celebration will be held September
21-27.

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden
surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores
and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since
1982 according to the American Library Association. There were 307
challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2013,
and many more go unreported. The 10 most challenged titles of 2013
were:

1. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav
   Pilkey
   Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited for age group,
   violence

2. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age
   group, violence

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
   Indian, by Sherman Alexie
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, racism,
   sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

4. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
   Reasons: Nudity, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually
   explicit, unsuited to age group

5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

6. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee
   Stone
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, nudity, offensive language,
   sexually explicit

7. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
   Reasons: Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, unsuited to age
   group

8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen
   Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, sexually explicit,
   unsuited to age group

9. Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: Occult/Satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint,
   sexually explicit

10. Bone (series), by Jeff Smith
    Reasons: Political viewpoint, racism, violence

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