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Darian Reed

Mrs. DeBock

English IV Honors

23 February 2017

Essential Question: Should book banning be allowed to continue in schools and public libraries

throughout the United States?

Working thesis: Schools and public libraries should not have to terminate the access of certain

books from all people in order to please the demands of a small group of people.

Refined Thesis: School and public libraries should not be allowed to remove books from their

shelves because of the complaint of a few individuals, students and families have the right to

determine whether or not an individual child is mature enough to read about different themes,

and students are safer learning about controversial topics in a place that is less biased such as

school so removing books with controversial topics strips students of their right to explore those

themes.

Annotated Bibliography

American Library Association. "Infographics." Banned & Challenged Books. American Library

Association, 07 Nov. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

The American Library Association places the statistics for the top ten challenged books

from each year on this page. Along with this list of ten books it talks about the common

reasoning behind why the books were challenged, who challenged them, as well as where they

were challenged the most. This page compares which reasoning behind book challenges is most

common by showing the percentage of challenged books from a year that were challenged for

each reasoning. This page would be a helpful source to support my position because it expresses
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statistically the majority of people who are behind book challenges and banning as well as what

areas are affected the most by these book bans and challenges. This page also shows how these

statistics have changed over the years.

Beck, Christina. "Why a Virginia school considers banning two American classics." Christian

Science Monitor, 3 Dec. 2016. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

In schools across the United States will at some point in time books that are considered

classics that are usually assigned in class get challenged, that being the case in the Virginia

school discussed in the article. The article beings forth the different perspectives on book

banning; such as describing why parents feel that certain books are not appropriate for students

to read, while also talking about why it is important for children and teens to read different

American classics and learn about themes and topics that might make them uncomfortable since

school is more of an unbiased place for students to become educated on a variety of controversial

topics. This article will help me support why books with controversial topics and themes are

more beneficial for students than harmful to the students.

"Books on the hook." Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication, 5 Mar. 2007, p. 7+.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context, Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

This article shows more of a political perspective on censorship and how it stands in

situations and how it should be approached when it comes to students freedom to read any book

that they are interested in reading. The article supports how a school is safer location to explore

controversial topics and learn more about those topics on their own without as much extreme

biased as they could possibly face at home or in a different place where they have access to
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books. This article helps to support my thesis because it talks about how different government

cases and laws should be able to protect a students right to read any book that they please

without being controlled by censorship through the school.

DiMarco, Scott and Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. "I Banned a Book to Make People

Notice the Problem." Time.Com, 07 Oct. 2015. EBSCOhost, Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

This article is how a person met up with a small group of people and decided to ban a book

to see how people would react to the book being banned. Though a majority of people did not

care about the banned books that were already banned from the library, when a book was banned

while they attended the school, many students who did not care before all of a sudden were

offended by the book being banned. This article goes into depth of the experiment and how all of

the authors peers reacted to the book being banned from their school library. This article will

help me support my thesis because it shows one of the main reasons why those who dont read

most of the time also feel offended by books being banned in schools since they feel as though it

attacks their freedom of speech and right to read any book that interests them.

Linder, Roberta. "Exploring Censorship: Using Challenged and Banned Picture Books to

Introduce Middle and High School Students to a Controversial Topic." Literacy Today, no.

2, 2015, p. 36. EBSCOhost, Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

This article discusses how controversial picture books should be analyzed and used to help

middle schoolers and high schoolers. This article creates specific questions that teachers can use

to introduce these books to their class and how their students can learn from books that were

originally created for a younger audience, and show their students how the topics from those
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books were expressed in a manner that made them controversial. This article also states a list of

some childrens picture books that were challenged as well as why they were challenged. The

article supports my thesis because it shows that even though books are deemed to be unfit for

students to read, students have a great amount of knowledge to gain from these books since the

books with controversial themes are usually introduced in schools in a way that allows students

to understand the point of view of the author while also creating their own opinion on the topic.

Orenstein, Peggy. "Censorship Follies, Town by Town." New York Times, 7 Dec. 1996. Opposing

Viewpoints in Context, Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

Orensteins article brings in the perspective of an author of a challenged book and showed

how she felt about the reasoning behind why her book was challenged. This article also allowed

for the author to write a commentary on the case of the teacher who attempted to introduce her

book into a reading curriculum as a way to introduce a more modern book to discuss a certain

theme. The article talks about how this teacher then faces a family who disagreed with the

language in the book and wanted it to be banned. This article will help me support my thesis

because the article supports the idea that students in high school are in a safe place for students to

learn about specific topics and that the lesson learned from the story is more important than

obscene words that are scattered throughout but dont occur in the book as often as some people

imply.