2012 Banned Book Week Wrap-Up

I loved reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower for Banned Book Week. Wallflower is about a young teen named Charlie.  Charlie is entering the first year of high school and confronting the confusing, exciting and troubling issues that teens may face.  The book's epistolary style - each chapter consists of a letter Charlie writes to an anonymous friend - allows the author to show us a smart, thoughtful, young man who has some difficult problems. "This is my life," he writes in the first letter, "And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

Author Stephen Chbosky very skillfully captures the teen-scene vibe in Wallflower.  In fact, while reading the book I had a dream, which I haven't had in many, many, many years, of standing in my own high school's hallway, puzzled and embarrassed because I've forgotten the combination to my locker. Bad dreams aside, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is highly recommended reading.

Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", My Read for Banned Books Week 2012.

To help decide what to read for Banned Books Week, I looked over a book called, appropriately, Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read by Robert P. Doyle.  Doyle's book is itself quite interesting and full of intriguing tidbits.  For example, in 1981 the novel Don Quixote was banned by the Chilean military junta for supporting individual freedom and attacking authority.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (hereinafter "Wallflower") warranted in its Banned Books listing about a column and a half of commentary.  The picture below shows photocopies of the listing.  The book is about a young man in his first year of high school and Wallflower's target audience is the high school age reader.  As a result, the challenges were mainly to the book's inclusion on summer reading lists and in school libraries.  Two particular listings transformed this book into an instant must read for me.

First, in 2005 the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction wrote school district superintendents and principals "asking them to make sure that the book is no longer available to minors or any other students."  Oh, Arizona.  What shall we do with you?

Second, a Wisconsin group called West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries worked for four months to have Wallflower (and other books) moved from the community library's young adult section to the adult section and labeled as containing sexual material.  The library board voted unanimously to keep the book in the YA section and rejected labeling or restricting access to it.

So, controversial in Wisconsin.  Banned in Arizona.  And based upon everything I read in Banned Books, I concluded that Wallflower's plot ventures into all the hot button issues of adolescence: sex, drugs, suicide -- even awkwardness.

In sum, it is perfect reading for Banned Books Week.

So I read.  And I'll post more thoughts on The Perks of Being a Wallflower later in the week.

Banned Books Week: September 30 - October 6, 2012.

Banned Books Week starts next Sunday, September 30th.  To mark the occasion I've read Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which has just been released as a movie. With respect to the book, more thoughts later.  Suffice it to say for now that it's amazing.  Consider reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower yourself to celebrate Banned Books Week!