As devoted readers may be aware, Sept. 18 through 24 was Banned Books Week, an “annual event celebrating the freedom to read” that brings the entire community of book lovers to voice our support for books that express a broad spectrum of ideas, including those that we may disagree with, and that at one time or another have been in danger of being censored or completely banned.
Here are just three examples, at least one of which may surprise you.
In the novel “The Hate U Give” (Balzer + Bray), reviewed in a previous Book Talk! column, author Angie Thomas tells the powerful story of 16-year-old Starr Carter. Starr moves between two worlds; the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is; what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does – or does not – say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life. Recommended for readers age 14 and up.
Next up is “The Glass Castle” (Scribner), a noteworthy memoir of resilience and redemption by Jeannette Walls, a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. Jeannette Walls skillfully imbues “The Glass Castle” with the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
Last but not least, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Harper Perennial Modern Classics), the basis for a compelling film and an acclaimed Broadway play, tells a tale of honor and injustice in the deep South and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred.
Voted America’s Best-Loved Novel in PBS’s The Great American Read and one of the most cherished stories of all time, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
A gripping, heart-wrenching, remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father – a crusading local lawyer – risks everything to defend a Black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
That’s all for now; find out more about Banned Books Week at bannedbooksweek.org. Special thanks to the Doylestown Bookshop (doylestownbookshop.com) for their assistance in preparing this edition of Book Talk! Until next time, remember that “It’s always better with a book!”
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