You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get
people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury
I've been learning a lot about banned books this week, and found a number
of reasons why books are banned. In my opinion, the reason why most books
banned is because of vulgar language. It doesn't matter if the books are really
amazing that it deserves the highest medal award. If there are a ton of swear
words than certain people freak out and demand it to be banned. Another reason,
I found why books are banned is because of the topic it talks about, such as
homosexuality, magic, racism, kids killing kids, teen pregnancy, kids
trying to learn how to be accepted but doesn't attend school that much,
etc.
And it makes me angry that all of these books are banned. No,
homosexuality isn't a disease and people won't become gay if they read Heather
Has Two Mommies or any other book that talk about homosexuality. Kids
won't have low morals if they read The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, or anything else. And no kids won't become violent if they read The
Hunger Games trilogy.
It also makes me angry when some people ban books even though they haven’t
read it at all. What’s the point of banning something if you don’t even know
what the book is really about? Have they even tried to find what the theme
(moral lesson) of the book really is? Have they thought really hard what it
meant to other people or did they just ask themselves, this sucks because it
has etc, let’ s not read it anymore and let’s have
other people not read it or else they’re not a good person or whatever.
That is by law, a violation of free speech. If something is banned at the
library, than that’s taking one less idea that is replaced by yay we banned
this book now let’s burn them or something like that. That’s one less story for
a person to get into, to escape his/her own life at the moment. It’s one less
dream, one more sadness for the author, but it’s a lot more anger for the
people who enjoyed that story.
We have the right to read whatever we want, and it’s our choice to endure
the consequences that come out of it. If someone doesn’t like it than that’s
fine, but it’s stupid of him/her to take that book away from a reader that
enjoyed that book, or a reader that wants to read that book.
It’s like a person who hates the stars and tells the other people to not
go to the stars, if that makes sense.
So I dare you this week and any other week to read a banned book. Whether
it’s a book that has been banned from this year or any other year, read it. And
if you don’t like it then that is fine, but don’t let it get taken away from
the library because that is one less great literature out of the world. A work
of literature that can possibly help us in the future if things go wrong.
Literature that can make people small with one small character, a funny
sentence/paragraph, or something else. Literature that can inspire.
Lists:
Books banned by government (includes governments outside of the United States)
And more if you google: banned books list, or something of that sort.
