It's banned books week, Sept 24-October 1, 2005. Fight censorship and celebrate the power of words! At the very least, you could just BUY one of these books, to show your support for authors whose right to free speech has been challenged.

(these are all YA -interest books)

Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Deenie, by Judy Blume
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
Forever, by Judy Blume
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
Lord of the Flies, by Wiliam Golding
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

All those books are on the ALA's list of top 100 banned books. Here's a link to an early blog entry that names them all. I have read 43 of them. And I'll read an other this week!

There's lots of great information about banned books on Chris Crutcher's website. He's the author of The Sledding Hill, Whale Talk, Ironman and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, as well as the two mentioned above.

The logo below: on the left, from the ALA (The American Library Association). It reads: "Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance." -- Lyndon Johnson. And then: "It's your freedom we're talking about."

The one at the top of this post was made by the awesome Literaticat to wear as buttons. But I think it looks nice on a website, too. Yay!