For those of you who are not familiar with Banned Book Week, it is a time to celebrate your freedom to read.

I don’t believe I have ever been told I couldn’t read a book I’d chosen, not by my parents, teachers, librarians, nobody.  You can imagine my surprise as a library student, completing an internship at an elementary school, when my supervisor told a third grade student he couldn’t check out the latest Harry Potter book because it wasn’t on his level (referring to Accelerated Reader – but that’s a whole ‘nother rant!)  Hello!  Censorship!  I had to walk away before I slapped the woman upside her head!

First of all, apparently Harry Potter met the school’s acquisition guidelines and was acceptable for the library to stock and for students to read.  Second of all, don’t ever tell a child he can’t read a book, much less for the stupid reason of “it’s not on your level!”  Lastly, whose to say he’s not going to take the book home and his parent/guardian/older sibling will read it to him?  What’s the worst thing that could happen if he checked out a book “not on his level? -  he’ll try to read it himself, find it too difficult and just bring it back.  Our job as educators, and in particular as librarians, is to encourage reading, not discourage it!  Plus, now what is his opinion of librarians and of libraries going to be?  Hmmm?  Think he was happy that day?  Think he’s going to want to come back to his school’s library?  Nope!

I’m a firm believer that every book has an audience.  Students ask me all the time, can you give me a good book.  I have a standard answer for this “All of the books in here are good.”  For one student it’s like a running joke – she asks me this every time she comes in for a new book…and usually repeats the phrase with me.  This doesn’t mean that I necessarily like all of the books we carry, but I’m never going to tell someone you can’t read that.

However, I do frequently tell students as I check out the book they’ve picked out, “You’re not going to like this book.”  Secretly, hoping they will prove me wrong, but 99% of the time I’m correct.  Hey, I know my students! I soooo love it when they return the book a few days later and tell me “You were right, I didn’t like the book.”  Yes, I like being a no-it-all!  I’ll also give students my honest opinion of a book (if asked and only if I’ve read it), but ask them to give it a try and tell me what they think.  After all, discussing books is one of my passions. Hello! Librarian here!  Plus, the student and I may have totally different tastes in books.

Anyhoo!  For Banned Book Week this year, we are in the process of creating a bulletin board display.  I’m also going to steal an idea from Fran over at the Informania blog who told me she asked her students in the book club this past month to choose a banned book title.  They then met together to discuss why they felt the book was challenged or banned.  I thought this was a great idea.  Thanks, Fran.

BTW: According to the American Library Association, the top ten most challenged books from 2007 were:

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons:  Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons:  Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7) “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8 “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons:  Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons:  Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons:  Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Not surprisingly, the most frequent challengers are parents.  I’m all for parents deciding what their kids can/cannot read.  That’s called being a good parent!  I respect parents, and in particular parents who are monitoring what their kids read/watch/do.  What I object to is one parent telling a whole school/community what it’s kids (or adults) can/cannot read.

I hope you’ll take time to Celebrate Your Freedom to Read by reading a banned book (or any book!) during Banned Book Week.

Flickr Photo Credit: “Banned Book Week 2006” by wanderingone

Just a reminder for those in/around the Aiken, SC area the Aiken Children’s Book Festival is this weekend.  Admission is FREE! The event is being held at Aiken Technical College.  There are over 40 authors/illustrators participating.

I’ve never been able to attend (and this year is no exception – *sigh*), but I’ve heard nothing but good things from my teachers and fellow media specialists who have attended.   Every year I say I’m going to attend the book festival and Aiken’s Makin’ (craft show) but something always seems to come up.  Oh, well!  I hope some of you go and bring me back some news!

This past week the two Freshman Academy/English I classes were in the library for me to teach the students a few research skills.  Tuesday was spent familiarizing them with subscription databases – in particular DISCUS our states virtual library.  Wednesday was spent teaching them web evaluation skills and Thursday was spent learning how to find and use print resources.  After each lesson, students had to use the appropriate resource to find the answers to questions.  For example, using the web find the top grossing movie of 1999; using subscription databases, list three reasons why teenagers take up smoking.  For each answer they had to cite their sources using basic MLA documentation.

For print resources, the second question asked: “In what year did Mark Twain publish Tom Sawyer?”  Before turning them loose to find the answers to their scavenger hunt, the students were told they could only use the Card Catalog and the books on the shelves.  Of course, most of the students weren’t listening when I told them that the card catalog wasn’t going to provide them with the answers.  The card catalog would only tell them where they could find books on the topics.  When one group of girls got to the Twain question, they looked up Tom Sawyer and it gave them the the book info, but didn’t answer the question.  One of the girls asked “What do we do now?” to which I replied “Find the book.”  The girls all gave me incredulous looks and the one who asked what to do blurted “You mean I have to go get the book?”  I patiently answered (fighting the urge to laugh), “Yes, you have to get up from the computer, walk to the shelves, find the book, pull it down, open it up, and scan the introduction to find the answer.”  After a moment of silence, to which they all were staring at me like I was crazy, another girl asked “Why can’t we just use Google?”  Picture me holding my head.  The teacher came to my aid and reminded the students the purpose of today’s lesson was to learn how to use BOOKS not the Internet.  Still muttering to themselves about how stupid this assignment was, they went in search of the book.

What the students didn’t realize is that despite the fact that they “know” how to use the Internet/Google, they answered more of the scavenger hunt questions on the print exercise than they did on the Internet exercise.  Not because they couldn’t necessarily find the answers using the Internet, but because documenting their sources (finding the citation information) in the books was easier than finding the citation information for the web sites.  On the web evaluation scavenger hunt, most of the students only completed two of the five questions…and most had incomplete citation information.  On the print scavenger hunt, the students averaged answering 3.5 of the 5 questions in the 20 minutes or so they had to work on the scavenger hunt.

Flickr Photo Credit: “No Internet” by Graciolli

First, some really good news (at least for me!) is that I have a PARENT VOLUNTEER!  Yes, I feel this should be all caps as I am shouting for joy.  How many folks can say they have a parent volunteer – at the high school level!  Elementary level, of course! But at the high school level…not very many!  Granted, she only comes in once a week and only for a couple of hours, but still, I have an adult volunteer!  I’m doubly lucky as she works at our local public library branch, so she’s already familiar with how to run a library.  Added to that, she likes doing bulletin board displays and is very crafty – which I am not!

My other great news (at least for me!) is that this school year’s first month has been the busiest one for me EVER.  Usually, the first month is pretty dead in the library and I spend my time entering student info into various systems and with teacher training (ie: gradebook setup).  However, this year I’ve been swamped (with the above) but more importantly, with scheduled classes and book circulation!  This year we had all English students take a reading comprehension test and an information literacy skills test.  The results will help us determine where we go from here for remediation and additional instruction.  Also, all of the English classes have already had their students check out books for their first novel projects – which traditionally hasn’t happened until mid-September.

In addition to being busy with English classes, our school has initiated a school wide literacy initiative.  All subjects must include required reading of at least two books (or 200 pages) of reading outside of their textbook.  This can be newspaper articles, novels, pamphlets, … you name it.  I’m thrilled that all of the classes will be assisting to improve our students’ reading scores.  I’m a firm believe that the more you read, the better reader you become – and the better your vocabulary develops.

And finally, you may have been wondering (or not) what happened to my participation in School Library Journal’s All Together Now – 23 Things project.  Well, here’s the deal…I haven’t had the time.  But another, more practical reason is that SCASL (my state’s school library association) is planning a similar event.  I figured I wouldn’t want to repeat the same activities; therefore, I will not be continuing the All Together Now program and instead complete the SCASL program when it is finalized.

Here are the pictures of the Dracula display – “Creatures of the Night” books.

Update: I’ve gotten mixed reactions to the display. Some who think it’s “cool” and others who think he’s funny looking. I have had to re-stock the books twice though, so at least he’s doing his job!