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It may have started in late September, but Banned Books Week is already providing this busy readers with all sorts of new children’s book ideas!

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 2015 celebration will be held September 27-October 3.

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. Read more about Banned Books Week HERE.

I shared my own “banned book” experience on Thursday when I talked about the one and only time I “banned ” a book from my family’s bookshelf, and how I used the opportunity as a learning experience for everyone as well. I also whipped up my own Banned Books Week Booklist for everyone to enjoy as well.

In my weekly travels, I have also discovered even more book ideas, resources and booklists. Enjoy!

13 Banned and Challenged Books For Kids from No Time for Flashcards

Even Children’s Books are Banned- Banned Book Week from Alohamora

Free printable Banned Books Bookmarks from Classroom Freebies!

What book is your favorite banned book?

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The Waldorf Homeschool Handbook is a simple step-by-step guide to creating and understanding a Waldorf inspired homeschool plan. Within the pages of this comprehensive homeschooling guide, parents will find information, lesson plans, curriculum, helpful hints, behind the scenes reasons why, rhythm, rituals, helping you fit homeschooling into your life. Discover The Waldorf Homeschool Handbook: The Simple Step-by-Step guide to creating a Waldorf-inspired homeschool.

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The post Weekend Links: Great books for Banned Books Week appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Yes it’s true, there was once a book series that I banned from my then 12 year old. What’s that you say? The Magic Book Lady banning books from her literate prone household? Happy Banned Books Week everyone.

I’ve never been one who agrees with banning books. I believe in providing age appropriate reading materials for my children but not banning books. That worked until a little book called Hunger Games was discovered by my 12-year old. At this point the Hunger Games had been out a long time and had read it and it completely chilled me to the bone. The idea of putting up 12 children who all must die except 1 to save humanity just hit a little too close to home for some reason. The Hunger Game series is a well written and well conceived book series which still chills me to the bone whether in book or movie form.

I didn’t think another thing about it until we were at the library many months later and wonder son comes up with a stack of books in his arms, the top one being The Hunger Games. “Oh no, not that book,” I thought. And then I heard that very phrase coming out of my mouth. I said something very parental like, “It’s not age-appropriate for you and it deals with very difficult ideas that I don’t think you’re ready for.”  End of story I thought.

Nope………

It had developed a cult following since I had read it plus two more books had come out in the series and well there you have it , a must read book.

One day I walked into the attic room known as the cubby at our house and there was Wonder Son sitting on the bed reading a book hidden by a folder and that’s when I discovered he was secretly reading The Hunger Games.

So what to do? I could punish him, but really. Punish him for reading a book? I don’t think so. The road I took was that of opportunity. Instead of trying to protect him I decided to use The Hunger Games as a dialog tool. I told him he could read the book but that I wanted to have a conversation about it when he was finished. He came out of the cubby, could read freely and we had the greatest conversations over the entire book series. My opinion remains the same, but I also learned why he was attracted to the book and why it didn’t seem as scary to him as it did to me.

We read the other two books in the series at the same time talking all the way through them.  It allowed my voice and concerns to be heard. It allowed his points of views and concerns to be heard and at times we even agreed to disagree. I think that skill in itself is a very powerful and capable tool for both of us to have in our tool belts.

Since the Hunger Games, controversial and intense book discussions have continued with my wonder son as he is now a junior in high school. Just this year we had a very deep and meaningful conversation over The Scarlet Letter.

OK, so where do I stand with the Hunger Games? Go read it. Suzanne Collins is a brilliant writer to be able to elicit such strong responses. For us, her book series was a game changer and has opened the door to many incredible conversations.

Though Hunger Games is the only book I’ve ever banned, there have been many in the past. This week is Banned Books Week and this year’s theme is having to do specifically with YA (Young Adult) Titles. Here is a list of the most commonly banned YA books in the US. Have you read any of these ? What do you think?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon Books/Knopf Doubleday)

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston)

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury Publishing)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster)

Drama by Raina Telgemeier (Graphix/Scholastic)

Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins)

The Giver by Lois Lowry (HMH Books for Young Readers)

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (Vintage/Knopf Doubleday)

Looking for Alaska by John Green (Dutton Books/Penguin Random House)

For more information about Banned Books Week have a look here and be sure and join the Virtual Read-Out.

***Some of these links are affiliate links.

The post I Can’t Believe I Banned A Book: Banned Books Week Booklist appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Observing Banned Book Week with “The Amazing Bone” by William Steig

The American Library Association, American Booksellers Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Council of Teachers of English are among those groups sponsoring the observation and focus on censorship in reading, via “Banned Book Week” from September 27th to October 3rd. 2015. It is also endorsed by The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

A friend of mine told me our local library is featuring books on the list this week. Some  “classic” reads are on this list, and it’s pretty hard to fathom how they ever made it on the list in whatever places they are banned.

If you check out the lists of links that I have provided, you will see there are a plethora of picture books and novels that have either been “challenged” or “banned” from libraries or schools because they “offend” the tastes of someone in the culture.

I read the difference between a “challenge” and a “ban” as it refers to a book, according to the American Library Association. A challenge is “an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or group.” Apparently this does not involve a mere point of view.

And a “ban” is the actual removal of the materials that are “challenged”.

And as the ALA asserts, these actions may be undertaken with the best of intentions and that is, to “protect others, frequently children – from difficult ideas and information.”

Parents rightfully can be very vocal about what is required reading for their children when it seemingly goes against their sense of what children of a certain age should be reading. And as a result School Boards and libraries are lobbied to either limit access to the offenders or ban them outright.

I am not going to get into a polemic on the right or wrong of this issue.

That is an issue for parents to debate and decide for their own children as to what they read or do not read.

But, I do want to put forth for careful consideration, one picture book that has been “challenged” in the past, as a model for what can and does happen.

It is a favorite of mine and of my now grown daughters. The author is writer/illustrator William Steig, renowned for his illustrations in “The New Yorker.” He began a career in picture book writing in his 60’s; and that was his age, and not the decade!

And what a career it was.

His insightful drawings, brilliant use of vocabulary (“odoriferous wretch” – a term used to describe a villain in “The Amazing Bone”), and his imaginative narratives, filled with kind, caring, despairing, noble at times, silly, wily, pragmatic, and very human animals, are nothing sort of amazingly unique  – and real.

In “The Amazing Bone”, life hums along on a beautiful spring day for a pig named Pearl. It opens in an everyday sort of way, until she happens upon a bone that talks in any language and can imitate any sound. The bone can also make magical things happen when all seems hopeless.

An easy bond of friendship is formed between the two, yet danger lurks unexpectedly and is resolved by the bone! He himself is unaware of his amazing powers; that is, until he is forced to use them!

As the “unexpected” appears in the form of a smooth talking, lavender lapel-filled, and nattily dressed fox, the bone, using words and phrases that he intuited fleetingly from a witch, such as “Scraboonit” and “Adoonish ishgoolak,” it soon whittles the fox down to minuscule size -  with words!

I guess what I want to say, and perhaps what William Steig hinted at in “The Amazing Bone,” is that words are very powerful things, and when they find their way into books, they are amazingly powerful – like those in “The Amazing Bone.”

And, as a parent, what a shame it would have been for my girls not to have read, and reread that book that lives in their “quotable memories” today.

Please give this “challenged” book a read as well as Steig’s “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble” that won the Caldecott Award in 1970 for “Best Picture Book of the Year”, given by The American Library Association,   as well as his “Amos and Boris” and “Dr. De Soto,” that are but a sampling of his many wonderful picture books contributions.

Please decide for yourself the value of books on banned lists, and if they deserve a place in your child’s repertoire of reading. And while we are talking about lists, “The Amazing Bone” was on quite a few, and here they are:

 

1977 Caldecott Honor Book

 

1976 New York Times Book Review Notable Children’s Book of the Year

and Outstanding Book of the Year.

 

1976 Boston Globe – “Horn Book” Awards Honor Book for Picture Books

And so, to the naysayers of William Steig’s, “The Amazing Bone,” I quote from the words of the amazing bone to the fox:

Scraboonit!!!

file://localhost/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics

It’s Banned Books Week, a n annual event mostly held in libraries which spotlights attempts to remove books. This year’s theme is graphic novels, as discussed in this article from PW by Rich Shivener. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is sponsoring several events this week and has much more information and a list of banned or challenged comics here. The idea for GNs as a focus started when last year it was announced that the top ten challenged books nationwide includes Bone by Jeff Smith.

Tonight’s big event is a discussion by Scott McCloud and Larry Marder, co-sponsored by the CBLDF, Comic-Con International and the San Diego Central Library. Needless to say, if you’re in the area, it’s worth a listen.

Adult/Teen Librarian Danielle Dreger-Babbitt from Mill Creek Library WA is here to Roar with readergirlz for Banned Books Week
Welcome Danielle.

It’s Banned Books Week! From The American Library Association’s website: “Each year, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles a list of the top ten most frequently challenged books in order to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools. The ALA condemns censorship and works to ensure free access to information.” Based on 307 challenges, here are the top ten most challenged books of 2013.

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

Here’s how the Horn Book reviewed 2013′s most challenged children’s and young adult books.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants: An Epic Novel and sequels
by Dav Pilkey; illus. by the author
Intermediate     Blue Sky     124 pp.
09/97     0-590-84627-2     $16.95

Best friends and fellow pranksters George and Harold create a comic book superhero, Captain Underpants, and hypnotize their school principal into assuming his identity. Clad in cape and jockey shorts, Principal Krupp foils bank robbers and a mad scientist until the boys “de-hypnotize” him. Written in a tongue-in-cheek style and illustrated with suitably cartoonish drawings, the story is consistently laugh-out-loud funny. PETER D. SIERUTA
reviewed in the Spring 1998 Horn Book Guide

 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie; illus. by Ellen Forney
Middle School, High School     Little     232 pp.
9/07     978-0-316-01368-0     $16.99     g

The line between dramatic monologue, verse novel, and standup comedy gets unequivocally — and hilariously and  triumphantly — bent in this novel about coming of age on the rez. Urged on by a math teacher whose nose he has just  broken, Junior, fourteen, decides to make the iffy commute from his Spokane Indian reservation to attend high school in Reardan, a small town twenty miles away. He’s tired of his impoverished circumstances (“Adam and Eve covered their  privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands”), but while he hopes his new school will offer him a better education, he knows the odds aren’t exactly with him: “What was I doing at Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?” But he makes friends (most notably the class dork  Gordy), gets a girlfriend, and even (though short, nearsighted, and slightly disabled from birth defects) lands a spot on the varsity basketball team, which inevitably leads to a showdown with his own home team, led by his former best friend Rowdy. Junior’s narration is intensely alive and rat-a-tat-tat with short paragraphs and one-liners (“If God hadn’t wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn’t have given us thumbs”). The dominant mode of the novel is comic, even though  there’s plenty of sadness, as when Junior’s sister manages to shake off depression long enough to elope — only to die,  passed out from drinking, in a fire. Junior’s spirit, though, is unquenchable, and his style inimitable, not least in the take-no-prisoners cartoons he draws (as expertly depicted by comics artist Forney) from his bicultural experience. ROGER SUTTON
reviewed in the September/October 2007 Horn Book Magazine

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
Middle School, High School    Scholastic     374 pp.
10/08     978-0-439-02348-1     $17.99

Survivor meets “The Lottery” as the author of the popular Underland Chronicles returns with what promises to be an even better series. The United States is no more, and the new Capitol, high in the Rocky Mountains, requires each district to send two teenagers, a boy and a girl, to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a reality show from which only one of the twenty-four participants will emerge victorious — and alive. When her younger sister is chosen by lottery to represent their district, Katniss volunteers to go in her stead, while Peeta, who secretly harbors a crush on Katniss, is the boy selected to join her. A fierce, resourceful competitor who wins the respect of the other participants and the viewing public, Katniss also displays great compassion and vulnerability through her first-person narration. The plot is front and center here — the twists and turns are addictive, particularly when the romantic subplot ups the ante — yet the Capitol’s oppression and exploitation of the districts always simmers just below the surface, waiting to be more fully explored in future volumes. Collins has written a compulsively readable blend of science fiction, survival story, unlikely romance, and social commentary. JONATHAN HUNT
reviewed in the September/October 2008 Horn Book Magazine

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl
by Tanya Lee Stone
High School     Lamb/Random     227 pp.
1/06     0-385-74702-0     $14.95     g
Library edition 0-385-90946-2     $16.99

“Stupid / humiliated / foolish / stung / heartbroken / pissed off / and a little / bit / wiser.” High school freshman Josie sums up how she feels after falling for an only-out-for-one-thing senior, and she isn’t alone. The three (very different) teen girl narrators in this candid free-verse novel form a chorus of varied perspectives on how a “bad boy” — the same boy for all three — causes them to lose control before they even realize what’s happening. Stone’s portrayal of the object of their (dis)affection is stereotyped, but the three girls are distinct characters, and she conveys the way the girls’ bodies and brains respond to the unnamed everyjerk in electrically charged (and sexually explicit) detail. Finally returning to her senses, Josie decides to post warnings about her ex in the back of the school library’s copy of Judy Blume’s Forever…because “every girl reads it eventually.” Others add their own caveats in a reassuring show of sisterhood. As this scribbled “support group” illustrates, even the most careful and self-aware among us sometimes gets bitten by the snake in the grass. CHRISTINE M. HEPPERMAN
reviewed in the January/February 2006 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

Looking for Alaska
by John Green
High School     Dutton     237 pp.
3/05     0-525-47506-0     $15.99      g

A collector of famous last words, teenage Miles Halter uses Rabelais’s final quote (“I go to seek a Great Perhaps”) to  explain why he’s chosen to leave public high school for Culver Creek Preparatory School in rural Alabama. In his case, the Great Perhaps includes challenging classes, a hard-drinking roommate, elaborate school-wide pranks, and Alaska Young, the enigmatic girl rooming five doors down. Moody, sexy, and even a bit mean, Alaska draws Miles into her schemes,  defends him when there’s trouble, and never stops flirting with the clearly love-struck narrator. A drunken make-out session ends with Alaska’s whispered “To be continued?” but within hours she’s killed in a car accident. In the following weeks, Miles and his friends investigate Alaska’s crash, question the possibility that it could have been suicide, and  acknowledge their own survivor guilt. The narrative concludes with an essay Miles writes about this event for his religion class — an unusually heavy-handed note in an otherwise mature novel, peopled with intelligent characters who talk smart, yet don’t always behave that way, and are thus notably complex and realistically portrayed teenagers. PETER D. SIERUTA
reviewed in the March/April 2005 Horn Book Magazine

Bone: Out from Boneville and sequels
by Jeff Smith; illus. by Jeff Smith and Steve Hamaker
Intermediate     Scholastic/Graphix     140 pp.
2/05     0-439-70623-8     $18.95

When greedy Phoney Bone is run out of town, his cousins, Fone and Smiley, join him. Fone makes friends with a country girl, her no-nonsense gran’ma, and a dragon; Phoney must contend with ferocious rat creatures who are led by a mysterious “hooded one” and who want Phoney’s soul. This graphic novel (originally published in comic-book form) is slow paced but nevertheless imaginative. MARK ADAM
reviewed in the Fall 2005 Horn Book Guide

Are you reading any banned books this week?

The post Banned Books Week 2014 appeared first on The Horn Book.

September 22-28, 2013 is Banned Book Week. In honor of that week, I will be blogging about banned or challenged books this month.

Perhaps more than any other genre with the possible exception of literary fiction (and that's an iffy comparison), Science Fiction, and its cousin Fantasy, is about ideas. Ideas can be controversial, and often bring out the would-be censors.

Worlds Without End has a Web page that lists 47 frequently challenged or banned Science Fiction and Fantasy books. What do you think of the books on their list? I'll bet that, if you are a SF/F reader, some of your favorites are on their list. How would your life be different if these books had been kept from you by well-meaning parents or community activists?

• The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathon Stroud
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Carrie, Stephen King
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Cujo, Stephen King
• The Day After Tomorrow, Robert A. Heinlein
• The Dead Zone, Stephen King
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• The Giver, Lois Lowry
• Grendel, John Gardner
• Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
• Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
• Roadside Picnic, Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
• The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
• Shade's Children, Garth Nix
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
• We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• The Iron Dream, Norman Spinrad
• The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
• The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
• The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
• The Lovers, Philip Jose Farmer
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• Tithe, Holly Black
• Valiant, Holly Black
• Ironside, Holly Black
• Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow

Following Scott's excellent post on Banned Books Week, I wanted to add my personal experience regarding this topic.

I was born in Argentina at the peak of the last military dictatorship, in 1977. The society in which I was born and raised was oppressed for years until the people united against tyranny and said "Nunca Mas," Never Again. When I was young, there were a lot of things that weren't available to me and the rest of the population. Some of them were books, music, and theater. Whatever made it to the public was dubbed in Spanish with all the consequences this brings. The message was diluted to what a small group of people thought it was okay for society. In fact, it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I read Little Women in English for the first time and discovered that several paragraphs and whole chapters had been deleted from the translated version I had memorized as a child. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach by a futbol going a hundred miles an hour (and I have in real life. I know that feeling very well)

Among other things, I had never even heard of The Hobbit or of the Lord of Rings Trilogy. When I arrived at BYU, one of the first things I did was go to the library. I was overwhelmed by the amount of books that the walls and countless shelves of not one floor, but five! I could have stayed there forever and never go to class. In fact, if I never stepped in a classroom but was allowed to spend as much time as I wanted in that library, I would have been satisfied.

Fortunately, I did go to class; one of the first ones was an English honors in which we discussed The Lord of the Rings. I remember the very first quizz. I studied for hours, unused to the difficult language of the book (English is my second language after all, but Tolkien's wasn't the English I had studied for years).

I was dismayed when I read the questions. I had no idea who Bilbo was, and there were five questions on this character. When I complained to the professor, he said he had included questions from The Hobbit, and since it was popular culture we all should know it.

I still disagree with his logic, although it makes sense in a way. Eventually I did very well in that class, and I think the professor had a reality check: not all students came from the same background and culture, and as a consequence defined popular culture a little different from him.

Where I'm going with this is, no small group of people has the right to say what I am allowed to consider writing/reading/seeing/saying. During the military dictatorship countless artists were exiled from Argentina because their work was deemed revolutionary, anti-patriotic.

When I was in high school I had the blessing of being friends with a group of girls who, like me, loved reading and discussing the ideas we read. We borrowed and lent books to each other, and we talked. There were many books I read that I didn't like. But I could read them, or put them away if I didn't want to continue giving my time to something I didn't enjoy. Yesterday, I was reading a Stephen King's book in English for the first time, and I reached a passage that really disturbed me because of the violence. I put it away. Do I think no one should ever read that book? No. Everyone has the right to read whatever they please. My son is almost twelve, and he's a read-a-holic like his mother. However, there are some books I don't want him to read yet. There is plenty of time for some things. But when he's old enough, they'll be available for him.

Sometimes when we read these now so popular dystopian books, we as readers are horrified by some aspects of those fictional societies. I'm horrified because I lived in one, and the effects of the lack of freedom TO THINK are devastating. My country still hasn't recovered.

Read books. Banned or not. Think for yourself. Give others the same right.

In the video below, I talk about Scars being challenged, why I wrote Scars, and the need for “dark” books – for Banned Book Week. I read banned and challenged books, and I hope you do, too!

Here are some of my favorite quotes about banning books and censorship:

“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ”
- Joseph Brodsky

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
- Heinrich Heine

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.”
- Voltaire

Do you have a favorite quote about banned books or censorship? How about a favorite banned or challenged book? Let me know!

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 2012 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 30 through October 6. 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 326 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2011, and many more go unreported.

The Uprise Books Project wants to give teens access to banned and challenged books. The organization hopes to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter to fund the design and development costs of their website.

Here’s more about the project: “When we’re through, kids throughout the country will be able to use the site to browse through a selection of books that have been banned and/or challenged somewhere in the United States and add the ones that interest them to their personal Wish Lists. As long as they’re between the ages of 13 and 18 and meet the income requirements, we’ll do our best to fulfill their requests. At the same time, folks concerned about little things like poverty, literacy and censorship will be able to search through some basic demographic data to find books  they’d like to sponsor.”

The organizers have created several different rewards packages for supporters. Backers who donate at least $5 will be recognized on the finished site. Above, we’ve embedded a video about the project.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.