Banned Book Week Giveaway Hop

Sunday, September 25, 2016

It's Banned Book Week! If you haven't heard about it before here's the brief gist:

"The Banned Books Week Coalition is a national alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Coalition seeks to engage various communities and inspire participation in Banned Books Week through education, advocacy, and the creation of programming about the problem of book censorship. The 2016 celebration will be held September 25-October 1.

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982 according to the American Library Association."

I grabbed that from the Banned Books Week website: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/. The site also includes a list of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2015:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”)

For the giveaway, I am going to be giving away a book that was one of the top ten challenged titles in 2014 for reasons of "drugs/alochol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: date rape and masturbation." (*source). Marshall University has a good timeline of events surrounding this book. Geekade also has a detailed blog post about this.

I thought it was interesting that this title was also chosen as a World Book Night U.S. title for 2014. So that is the edition I am giving away. Without further ado...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

I simply adored this book! The movie, too. (I also have not had such a linktastic blog post in a long time! Sorry, random aside.) Anyway, you can enter via the Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thank you for stopping by! And now you can hop on: