Banned Books Week

A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway was featured in the June 1929 Scribner's Magazine and subsequently banned in Boston, MA. The novel received less than stellar reviews internationally as well. It was banned in Italy in 1929 because of its "painfully accurate description of the Italian retreat from Caporetto, Italy". In Germany, it was burned by the Nazis in 1933. It was banned in Ireland in 1939. The novel was challenged at the Dallas, TX Independent School District high school libraries in 1974, and at the Vernon Verona Sherill, NY School District as a "sex novel" in 1980.

The first novel by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

America's best-selling book on all aspects of women's health The classic resource that women of all ages can turn to for information about every aspect of their well-being. Completely revised for the first time in a decade, these pages give women everything they need for making key decisions about their health -- from definitive information from today's leading experts to personal stories from other women just like them. This updated edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves includes the latest on: " Nutrition and exercise " Relationships, sexuality, and sexual health " Complementary health practices " Reproductive choices, pregnancy, and childbearing " Growing older " Medical testing and procedures Together with its companion website (www.ourbodiesourselves.org), Our Bodies, Ourselves is a one-stop resource for women of all generations. Plus: The rearranged food pyramid, a chapter about sexual orientation and gender identity, advice for making safer sex more fun, the latest on breast-feeding, support for women experiencing pregnancy loss, and a section devoted to getting the best care in today's complicated health care system.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess has been banned for it's "objectable language" in Aurora, CO and Westport, MA in the late 1970s. In 1973 a Orem, UT bookseller was arrested for selling the novel. The charges were dropped, but the bookseller was forced to closed his store and move to another city. In 1982, the novel was removed from two Anniston, AL high school libraries, but later returned to the shelves on a restricted basis.

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice--but the weight of history will only tolerate so much. One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Voted novel of the century by librarians across the country (Library Journal).

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

Margaret Simon, almost twelve, has just moved from New York City to the suburbs, and she's anxious to fit in with her new friends. When she's asked to join a secret club she jumps at the chance. But when the girls start talking about boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret starts to wonder if she's normal. There are some things about growing up that are hard for her to talk about, even with her friends. Lucky for Margaret, she's got someone else to confide in . . . someone who always listens.

Seventh grader Alice decides that the only way to stave off personal and social disasters is to be part of the crowd, especially the in crowd, no matter how boring and, potentially, difficult.

The hero-narrator is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal--including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is "Lyra" a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want. But what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other. . . .

Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will--a boy on the run, a murderer--a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels. Each is searching--Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father--but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, their destinies are bound together . . . until they are split apart.

Throughout the worlds, the forces of both heaven and hell are mustering to take part in Lord Asriel's audacious rebellion. Each player in this epic drama has a role to play--and a sacrifice to make. Witches, angels, spies, assassins, tempters, and pretenders, no one will remain unscathed. Lyra and Will have the most dangerous task of all. They must journey to a gray-lit world where no living soul has ever gone and from which there is no escape. As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living--and the dead--to depend on Lyra and Will.