Ban This! Speak

Banned Book Week is September 30th to October 6th, and since I am participating in Donna's event to help bring awareness to this ridiculousness that some dork began, oh, I don't know ages ago I'll  post one challenged book everyday in no particular order until the event ends.

I'm going to start with a book that was challenged when I was still a relatively new book blogger, and it really got me thinking about this whole idiotic idea of banning books.  As a Canadian reader (and as a reader in general), I love and enjoy all sorts of books and I honestly didn't even know we had our own Freedom to Read Week, much like the Banned Book Week of the United States.  If it weren't for the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere I would probably still be fumbling around in the dark.  I fully admit that up until now I have never really paid close attention to the awful reality that books are challenged and banned from those who would choose to enjoy them.  But from now on, I'm going to make a better effort to read, or even just acknowledge, those books that others challenge.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Reason: Challenged by Wesley Scroggins who claimed this book was 'soft pornography' and for 'exposing children to immorality.'

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country.