It’s Banned Books Week! Makes me want to go back to high school and sneak one into physics class to read (Mr. Masters would occasionally bust me for reading poetry during physics—yep, I was a real badass). Or maybe I should go to graduate school to become a librarian so I would be able to create a display to promote the books. Be a rebel: Read these!
The American Library Association has links to lists of the most challenged and banned books. There are some literary heavyweights that have been banned, but I will admit to being most happy to see Forever by Judy Blume on a list. Here’s my copy, along with my Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. I wish I could say the Forever copy was one I had when I was a kid, but I had only the PG-rated Blumes in my childhood library and had to grab glimpses of the “dirty,” dog-eared pages of Forever in the school cafeteria, holding the tattered paperback under the table so no adults would see. I picked up this copy at a yard sale a few years ago and gleefully read it cover to cover in one sitting.
I read both of those, several times. I was lucky I had access to them, because they were my teachers, in place of an absent mother.
Great memory lane trip in honor of those “bad” books that were so “good” to read.