With the recent article calling for the book banning of Laurie Halse Anderson's phenomenal Speak and the disinvite of bestselling and critically acclaimed YA author Ellen Hopkins at a literary festival in Texas  last month, I wanted to do something to promote ALA's Freedom to read banned/challenged Week. Thanks to Steph Su at Step Su Reads and Donna at Bites, I will pausing my current reviews and will be taking part in a Banned Books Reading Challenge. I will be participating in the challenge on September 25 through October 2nd.
  The goal of this challenge and ALA's Banned Book Week is three folded: to bring attention to the books that have been challenged or banned, to support authors whose freedom has been scrutnized and read their books, and most importantly, increase the awareness of censorship. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I believe everyone has the freedom to decide what they should or should not read.
  I haven't yet decided which books to read for this week, but I will definitely pick 7 titles for each day and from each literary cannon: children's, YA, and adult. I will choose the titles from the following lists:

• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's (my alma mater!) Challenged Children's Book List. This list is divided up into age group, which is very helpful.
• Hit List for Young Adults 2 by Teri Lesesne and Rosemary Chance. Written for librarians combating censorship but also provides a list of 20 titles of YA books that have been challenged/banned. 
• The Illinois Library Association has a great bibliography every year noting the books challenged that year. This would be most help if you were looking for the most current challenged books.  
• ALA's Yearly Challenged/Banned Books, which lists books challenged, restricted, removed, or banned in that year as reported in the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom.

Not only will I be doing a review of the book, I will also include information as to where and why the book was banned/challenged. Join me in the fight against censorship and celebrate the freedom to read.

Why not start your reading challenge by entering my International SPEAK Giveaway? Just click HERE to enter! No following necessary. Winners will be picked randomly. Giveaway open until October 2nd.