Banned Books Week

I promise to do an introduction to me, and the format of the blog, within the next few days. But today is Monday of Banned Books Week 2010, so I'm going to jumpstart this blog with a post about that.

I've been doing a word/reading/writing meme on my LJ for about a week now, and today's topic was relevant: Choose a banned book you've read and tell me how it has affected you, POSITIVELY.

I've read 55 of the top 100 list. Here's a list of the ALA's top 100: List!.

The banned book I'm going to claim had the most influence on me iseither Sylvester and the Magic Pebble or A Light in the Attic.

Sylvester was banned/threatened in 1977 by The Illinois Police Association, along with 11 other states, because it portrays policemen as pigs. Silverstein was banned in 1993 for promoting disrespect, violence and horror. It ended up being one of the most banned books in the 1990s.

These books influenced me, not to call police pigs or to become highly disrespectful (thought sometimes I am) or violent. Sylvester is one of my three favorite books, alongside The Big Orange Splot and The Elephant's Sneeze. It's beautifully drawn, the writing flows and it shows what family is all about. The pig-cops are NOT portrayed in a negative light - they do the best they can to help Syl's family find him.

And Silverstein was a vague part of my life, but became more prevalent when I was an English undergrad. He helped me to see that not all poetry has to be boring, hard to read, or about trees and romance. Reading him at Dead Poet's Night for my English honor's society lead me to branch out and find more poetry I liked, including Slam. (For those of you who know me in RL, you know how much I did slam poetry).

So, yeah, I've been horribly deformed and mentally depraved by reading books that offended other people. Hmm...maybe the fallout of me reading all these banned books is that I think EVERYONE should be able to read the books they want to read.

How 'bout you?