Last year when I posted about Canada’s Freedom to Read Week, I was trying to read The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and/or Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov as part of the challenge. Unfortunately, I haven’t read either book as I got distracted by my huge TBR Pile. However, this year, I’ve got more exciting news: my friend Diane has begun a challenge on BookCrossing to Release Challenged Books as part of Freedom to Read Week 2010. The challenge to release banned/challenged books, or books by persecuted/jailed authors (especially Canadian) during the month of February.
Freedom to Read Week is from February 21-27, 2010 and lots of Canadian libraries celebrate with special events and challenges. Make sure to check out the Calendar of Events on the Freedom to Read website to see if your local library is planning anything. If they aren’t, why not ask if they will!?
Can’t think of any banned or challenged books or authors? You’ll be surprised by some of the names on these lists.
- Freedom to Read Week has a list of Challenged Books & Magazines
- Wikipedia list of books banned by governments around the world
- Amnesty International USA has updates on Banned Books each year
- PEN Canada helps to protect and aide persecuted writers
Please release your Canadian banned or challenged books and authors via BookCrossing and help spread the freedom to read.
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2 Comments
Ooooh! LOVE Handmaiden’s Tale. It made me fall in love with Atwood. It was the first book I studied in college. I can still recall so many of the issues we discussed…
I’m curious…I went to look at the “banned” list and discovered that many, even most of the books noted, were not banned in general, but considered in-appropriate for a certain age group of readers. As a parent, I appreciate not pushing too much on kids too early. I hope that doesn’t make ME a bad person!