Banned Books That Shaped America

Banned books are nothing new but as a society we still ban and challenge books today for various reasons.  The First Amendment allows writers to write what they want and lets readers read whatever they want. In 2013, books like The Kite Runner, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and Looking For Alaska, recently publish books have been on banned or challenged because of homosexuality, offensive language, nudity, sexually explicit, and are considered unsuited for the age group they are marketed.  Most people think logically about banned books, while others don’t think when they decide to ban or challenge a book.

We have the freedom to read what we want and just because someone else doesn’t like it, it doesn’t mean we have to follow him or her on his or her ideas.  Every year there are more books add to these kinds of list and you would think by now we wouldn’t have to have list like this because it is the 21st century but some people have a right to ban books as we have the right to read them.  Most books end up on these lists because of profanity, sex, violence, or religion.

I’m sure that you have read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain but a year after is was published it was banned in Concord, Massachusetts because it was racially insensitive.  Another great book that was banned and recently made into a movie is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  A Baptist College in South Carolina banned it because of the language and the sexually references.  As a child you probably read a book about a child named Max that goes off to an island to be with the monsters, Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are is another banned book.  Parents and even libraries considered the book to be dark and disturbing for young children.

Most of the books that are banned on ones that talk about real world problems and how people actually are in real life. And some people don’t want read about that kind of stuff and feel having it banned is a great way to get people from reading it but if you really think about it they are kind of failing at it.  This is because most people see that a book is being banned or challenged so they now want to read it and see what all of the commotion is on that book, which makes their sales go up.  It’s a losing battle and need to be put to bed.