Let’s Read Some Banned Books!

It’s banned books week! What better time to talk about reading?  You know that the banned books are always the best.

When I recently looked through the list of banned and challenged books, I was really surprised by the number of them that I had read, and loved.  Books that remind me of my childhood, and books that changed my way of thinking.

Here are a few banned books that you should read to your kids.

• A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstein
• In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
• King and King, by Linda de Haan

And when they’re old enough to read themselves, let them pick up a few of these books.  I read several of them in high school, because they were required reading.  I mean, has anyone actually graduated high school in the last 20 years without being required to read To Kill a Mockingbird?  Others are books I picked up at my local library, or off my grandmother’s shelf.  Who knew she was such a rebel?

Some of them I would give to a child as soon as they could read.  Some of them deal with difficult topics, but even if they didn’t understand everything, it’s a great way to start conversations about hard topics with kids.

• A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
• A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
• The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
• Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling

Some books I would save for the slightly older crowd, upper middle or high school.  Not because the topics are more difficult, but because the writing is a little more advanced and you need to have a certain reading level to make it though.

• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• The Giver, by Lois Lowry
• The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Once you’re grown up, of course, you can read anything you want.

• Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
• Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut