A reading awareness project: Banned books list printed on free bookmarks

A banned books list printed on bookmarks should include a square to mark off the titles we have already read. I will start by checking To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nigh-time, by Mark Haddon :

Dateline Texas: 130 books were targeted by reactionary parents. 11 were banned. Frustrated students started their own club: Leander’s Banned Book’s Club.

And this:  An echo opinion letter published in The Washington Post:  Pretty soon, we’ll just not let children read at all. 

What? What is this?  "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nigh-time"??- Oh paaleeeze! The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who is described as "a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire.

To the editor of The Washington Post:  I’m grateful to be a high school senior. Youth education has become highly politicized and is used as a pawn for politicians to win votes. And behind the deliberately vague wording lies a clear motive to restrict dialogue about sexuality and gender identity among students, some of whom might be looking for representation of their own.

What frustrates me most is the law’s illogical examples of banned materials, “descriptions, images or videos of sexual bestiality, lewd nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, sadomasochistic abuse, coprophilia, urophilia - IOW, a paraphilic disorder classified under Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5),,, i.e., obsession with penises...or fetishism.” I might have missed a couple of days here and there, but I’m certain my classes weren’t covering books with urophilia any time in my 12 years of public education. 

In fact, the grouping of sexual excitement and sexual conduct with concepts such as sadomasochistic abuse is chilling.

Banned books!  How many have you read? 

It’s saddening that young children won’t have many trusted adults around them able to speak about such common phenomena. Additionally, this law will more than likely be subverted to target material with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. In the (sadly) polarized world we live in, it’s more important than ever to set an example of open-mindedness for children.

From Jessica Feng, in McLean Virginia

P.S.  In my Maine Writer opinion, we should consider organizing a movement of people who want to protect free speech to begin memorizing Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.