[NCjim]

NC Ping

[little jeremiah]

Parents fighting back ping.

[Borges]

There's vulgar language in Chaucer and Shakespeare.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"People will always want to ban books," said the festival's director, Aaron Greenwald. "And we should always question that."

One thing you might want to question, Mr. Greenwald, is why, when books are required reading, part of a program of compulsory exposure of middle school students to disturbing, aberrant and perverse sexual themes, that asserting a moral right NOT to read offensive literature is called "Book banning."

Once again, for the ten millionth time, this is not a question of "censorship." It's a question of "sponsorship."

[Gordongekko909]

I read The Chocolate War. It was boring, but not all that offensive. I kept trying to get my teachers to let us read Tom Clancy stuff.

[H. Paul Pressler IV]

Book Burners!

[mtbopfuyn]

All this fuss could turn out to be the best that could happen. Imagine how many kids will tear themselves away from their Playstations to actually READ simply because of the controversy.

[Lizavetta]

Here's the Suggested Reading for Teens at our local library. You'll notice certain themes, of course:

# Am I Blue? Coming out from the Silence
edited by Marion Dane Bauer (Y FIC Am)
Short stories by writers including Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen, which look at homosexuality from every angle.

# Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson (Y FIC Anderson)
Melinda goes to a party before high school starts and becomes a social outcast because she calls in the police to end a big party. She becomes very withdrawn and only able to express herself through her art until the truth of the trauma is revealed.

# Feed
by M.T. Anderson (Y FIC Anderson)
Titus lives in a world where everyone is connected by a microcomputer feed in their heads, so over-stimulated that they fail to notice the absence of nature in their lives. When he meets Violet, a home-schooled rebel with a damaged feed, he begins to question this arid existence.

# In the Forests of the Night
by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (Y FIC Atwater-Rhodes)
Vampire Risika's only friend is a tiger in a nearby zoo and her life is pretty boring until she gets a chance to avenge her brother's death on her arch enemy Aubrey.

# The Fated Sky
by Henrietta Branford (Y FIC Branford)
16 year old Viking girl Ran tries to outwit her destiny as a sacrificial victim at Odin's winter festival.

# Between a Rock and a Hard Place
by Alden Carter (Y FIC Carter)
15 year old Mark and his diabetic cousin Randy embark on a canoe trip as a family rite of passage, then find it becomes a fight for survival.

# Painting the Black
by Carl Deuker (Y FIC Deuker)
When star athlete Josh Daniels moves in across the street from Ryan Ward, they become good friends, but Ryan's life is changed in the final year of high school by Josh's behavior and attitudes.

# Go Ask Alice
Anonymous (Y PAPERBACK Go)
Based on the diary of a 15-year-old drug user trying to go straight.

# Toning the Sweep
by Angela Johnson (Y FIC Johnson)
14-year-old Emmie visits her dying grandmother in the California desert and in videotaping her reminiscences comes to a deeper understanding of her African American heritage.

# Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories by outstanding writers for young adults
edited by Donald R. Gallo (Y FIC Join)
Seventeen short stories including Hispanic, Japanese, African American, Chinese, Lebanese and Cuban protagonists.

# The Silver Kiss
by Annette Curtis Klause (Y FIC Klause)
Zoe falls for Simon, a cute older man (200 years older), who happens to be a vampire. Unfortunately his younger brother goes on bloodthirsty rampages. Can their love survive?

# Tomorrow, When the War Began
by John Marsden (Y FIC Marsden)
Seven Australian teenagers return from a camping trip in the bush to discover their country has been invaded and they must hide to survive.

# How Do I Love Thee? Three Stories by Lurlene McDaniel (Y FIC McDaniel)
Teenagers facing life-threatening illnesses find that love makes life bearable.

# Monster
by Walter Dean Myers (Y FIC Myers)
Was 16 year old Steve Harmon just in the wrong place at the wrong time when a convenience store owner was shot? He records his prison and courtroom experiences in the form of a film script.

# Dean Duffy
by Randy Powell (Y FIC Powell)
18 year old Dean, whose baseball career has been ruined by an injured arm, has to decide whether or not to accept a college baseball scholarship.

# Buried Onions
by Gary Soto (Y FIC Soto)
19-year-old Eddie, a Mexican American in Fresno, tries to make a life for himself in a violent neighborhood.

# Companions of the Night
by Vivian Vande Velde (Y PAPERBACK Vande Velde)
Kerry's drive to the Laundromat without a driver's permit leads her into deep trouble with Ethan the vampire, an extremist group, kidnapping and worse.

# Black Mirror
by Nancy Werlin (Y FIC Werlin and Y FIC Mystery Werlin)
Frances, a half Jewish, half Japanese student at boarding school, sets out to solve the mystery of how her brother, supposedly a suicide, really died.

# The Pigman
by Paul Zindel (Y FIC Zindel)
Two teenagers befriend an old man and confront the harsh reality of their lives.

[StACase]

"People will always want to ban books," said the festival's director, Aaron Greenwald. "And we should always question that."

Big difference between banning and not including on the required reading list.

[APFel]

...and Toni Morrison's "Beloved" won a Nobel Prize.

... yet the book was horrible, and the movie was worse.

APf

[Tax-chick]

"Called2Action."

I'd like to sympathize with these people, but they lost me when they couldn't use the word "to."

[JWinNC]

...just another symptom of the bigger, underlying problem: Government monopoly schools.

[RobbyS]

Censorship of materials for minors is always valid. After all, that is the rationale of the Supreme Coury for not allowing explicitly religious material in the public schools: generally ,they are mature not enough to utilize the material.