Freedom to Read Week with My Friend Tegan

Banned books are a hot topic, there are lots of things that need to be taken into account. One thing is censorship, I believe that books should be censored I don’t however believe in the out right banning books.

I believe that parents should be aware of what their child is reading; do you want a 13 year old reading Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L James, I know I don’t. That is censorship I am okay with. If you don’t want your child reading Looking For Alaska by John Green (A book beloved by many) because there is a too graphic scene. Well okay then, that is your choice. That is censorship on a micro scale.

What I have a problem with is censorship on a macro scale which is also known as Book Banning. And I think one of the reasons I have an issue with this is that there are so many un-answers to questions that make me shake my head, like:

-Who makes the list of books that gets banned?
-What makes a book become banned? Is it the sexual content? Because look at Harry Potter.
-How much sexual context is in that? Lets face it, a very intense near sex scene in.
-In Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead there is a man nearly twice the females age, and you rarely hear anything about that, but the blow job in Looking For Alaska gets thrown to the wolves.
-Is it that some books don’t uphold good Christian values? Who’s to say that we are all Christian? And how much `devil magic` is truly in The Diary of Anne Frank?


But all in all, I think banning books is wrong. It`s something that's totally a good thing for the book community because we can band together and have these big events, we can pass on great books, like Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler, or any one of Ellen Hopkins books (which in my opinion are the best), and we can tell nothing sells more copies of a book then it being taboo… simply look at Fifty Shades of Grey.