Help Defend Perks of Being a Wallflower

[K]

Over on twitter, Neil Gaiman has just tweeted a plea to help prevent a school in Illinois from banning The Perks of Being a Wallflower. A book that was turned into a successful film last year.

There is an appeal against the initial decision to ban the book taking place on 10th June and the National Coalition Against Censorship has started a letter writing campaign urging the school board to reverse their decision

the link to the website giving details can be found HERE if anyone wants to get involved.

[Kaje]

Cool - thanks for the link and info. And good for Neil Gaiman.

It's amazing how much censorship of books there is in American schools, and on what grounds. Often it's the school board, and not anyone in the school itself, making the choices.

Chris Crutcher once wrote a book (The Sledding Hill) with no swear words in it (unlike his usual realistic teen voices) so that if a school board wanted to ban it for subject matter, (it deals with book banning, prejudice and religious pressures) they would have to admit it was for the content.

He's had books banned where it was clearly the realistic situations with teen lives the school board objected to. But sometimes they would take the easy route and just say "the word 'shit' is on page sixty three. We're not prejudiced, but that language is inappropriate." Yeah, right.

[Gabby]

Ugh. I know a couple of religious schools that gone as far as to cross out the word "evolution" out of books, so kids will believe in God. I think it's rediculous.