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2015 Banned Books - The List is Out

4/14/2016

 
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The American Library Association, who is tasked with keeping tabs on our libraries across the country, also receives the statistics on which books are asked to be removed from library shelves across the nation. Parents, usually, are the ones submitting requests for bans on books.

To be clear, the American Library Association does not ban books. They simply keep track of the books across the nation that are most challenged - "to inform the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools".

For reference, the most challenged series from the past decade (2000-2009) was the Harry Potter series.
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​Every year, they release the list and the reasons books are asked to be removed. Without further ado:
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  1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Originally published in 2006, it has been on the banned list before. The book follows a boy to his school and his yearnings for adventure and discovery. 

The book explores growing up in real terms - smoking, drinking, sex and in general running amuck while also staying the studious students. It's about young adults living under pressure as they grow up.

This book is suited for the older young adult - high schooler. 

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​Reasons for banning:

Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

​2. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons for Banning: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).

3. I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
This is a picture book aimed at younger kids. It's based on the true story of Jazz Jennings, a child who is transgender. It's starts with Jazz, the two year old and grows up with her a little bit. It's told in kid language - simple and clear.

​Reasons for Banning:

Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
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​4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
A newly published book in 2015, this book is an interview style based book. The author/photographer interviews 6 gender neutral young adults and goes through their before acknowledgement, during and after acknowledgement of their gender identities.

It's a very honest book and the School Library Journal recommends it for a more sophisticated kid audience - high schoolers on up.
Reasons for Banning:
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”).
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
This book is a look into one person's mind, who happens to be autistic. It was published in 2004 and this is the first time it's been listed on the Banned Books list. It has enjoyed more recent success as it was turned into a Broadway play (to good reviews). 

The main character, Christopher, starts to investigate the death of the neighbor's dog - a local mystery. The main character is 15 years old and the story is written to be appealing to a general audience. This is one you could read with middle schoolers.
Reasons for Banning:
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
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6. The Holy Bible
Reasons for Banning: Religious viewpoint.
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7. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
This book was published in 2007 and has yet to be on the Banned Book list. Again, this one was just made into a Broadway show, and so it is enjoying wider success. 

The story follows a family, whose father is a closeted gay man who is involved with the family babysitter and his male students from school. 

This is a graphic novel-memoir and so the illustrations are poignant. The author, Alison Bechdel, is also the author of the comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For" which is popular.
Reasons for Banning:
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
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8. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
A graphic novel that sets out to tell the tale of refugee child slaves. It's a love story as two young people try to make their way through the harsh world.

It is necessarily graphic and while the pictures are well done, there are adult themes throughout - sexual slavery, abandonment, and violence. The drawings try to make these topics not as graphic as they generally are portrayed.
Reasons for Banning:
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

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9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
This is based on a true story of a little girl's parents disappearing. Her grandmother enrolls her in a school for girls to better Nasreen's life - only it's a secret school, because they are not allowed for girls in Afghanistan. 

This is another young kid's book best suited for the middle elementary years.
Reasons for Banning:
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence
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10. Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Published in 2015, it was right away listed on the Banned Book list. 

Another book based on true events, the premise of this book is about 2 boys who set to take on the Guinness Book of World Record's record of kissing. They need to kiss for 32 hours to break it. 

A great book for upper middle school kids. 
Reason for Banning:
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

This Year's Themes

Aside from usually banned books, this year's seems to include coming of age stories in the era of homosexuality, refugee crises and marginalized individuals. It's not often that we see picture books on the Banned Book List (the last was Tango Makes Three) and it's worth noting that many of these books are true stories or memoirs of true events.

Enjoy (and keep reading, even if they are tricky subjects)!

Quick Literacy Tip: Magazines Are Fun

4/6/2016

 
Grandpa Reading
This is possibly going to be the quickest of the quick literacy tips, ever. And the easiest to do. When Liliana was just starting to handle books, we signed her up for Babybug (you can see Grandpa reading it to her above) and the Sesame Street magazine. She loved them, even though she's just staring at the camera. She would usually pay extra attention to the baby magazines.

Sign your kids up for magazines. This branches off of last week's quick literacy tip because...everyone LOVES getting mail. Not junk mail, real mail!

Read More

Boy Readers and Banned Books

4/4/2016

 
This is the beginning of a boy reader section. Stay with me each week, and I will post a different topic about motivating boys to read. We'll use the tag Boy Readers so you can find all the articles easily.

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Ask any teacher and you will find that they have at least one boy in their class who will only read sports books. Or dinosaur books. Or planet books. Or there is nothing at all in the classroom library that will suffice.

​Rarely, will you find a boy in an upper elementary classroom looking for the traditional fiction books that we stock in our classroom libraries. Not all boys, but at least one. 
As one recent reading study suggested...
​“The books that appeal to boys are rarely Caldecott or Newbery Award selections and can actually frequently be found on banned book lists.”

​In case you're wondering what that list is, you can find it here. It includes Harry Potter, The Chocolate War, Scary Stories, My Brother Sam is Dead, Fat Kid Rules the World and some great adult classics.
So then, the first thing we need to solve is having books boys like - not just the standard fare. And we can indulge their interests a little bit here. If the little boy reader in your life only wants to read dinosaur books or books about sports, do it. Or, stay with me here...farting books.

For awhile.

The goal is to get them through the gateway of reading. Once they're through, we motivate them to read more complex material (more on that in a different post, but you have to get them consistently reading first!). Boys tend to like edgier material, things that will throw the adults in their lives for a loop. Those are usually books that we don't always keep around in our school libraries. 

The idea here is to engage your boy readers. We must use the topics they like and stock their libraries full of books they would most likely pick up and find interesting. If they can't find the books that are interesting to them, they start to believe that they don't exist. And that reading is not for them. 

So, what interests them? You know your reader best, but the research bears this out. Boys tend to like:
  • Books in series. Once they find one they like, they want to know there are more of them.
  • Graphic Novels
  • Comics
  • Succinct texts - magazines and newspapers, which are not always kept in classrooms
  • Books with male main characters in action settings -Harry Potter and Gary Paulsen books

​So, what are some of the banned books that are appropriate for boys in elementary and middle school?
  • The Stupids Series (for younger readers) - Level K
  • Goosebumps Stories, Guided Reading Levels range from O to U
  • Scary Stories, Level P
  • Captain Underpants, Level P
  • The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, Level Q
  • The Boy Who Lost His Face, Level R
  • Saga - series of graphic novels, no Level
  • Bone - Ranges from Levels S to W
  • Harry Potter, Level V (and bonus, there is a new Illustrated Harry Potter series)
  • Harris and Me, Level V
  • Athletic Shorts, Level Y
  • Friday Night Lights, Level Y
  • His Dark Materials, Level Z
  • Fallen Angels (for middle schoolers content wise), Level Z
  • A Day No Pigs Would Die, Level Z
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Level Z
  • Fat Kid Rules the World
  • Grendel
  • The Chocolate War

And bonus, a number of these are series and can be followed immediately up with the next book. Keep in mind, you can also read these with your boys. They can be your read-aloud book. 

​Let's get our boys reading enthusiastically. Enjoy!

Reading Dads are Special

3/28/2016

 
Dads Who Read Are Awesome
One of my favorite pictures of a reading Dad and a kid. It helps that they are mine!

Dads are awesome in all sorts of ways. 

Now that that's out of the way...

​Dads who read are more awesome. 

​Reading aloud to your kids is a great skill to have. As we discussed last week, reading aloud to your kids is important and there are ways to make it fun at home and reachable. You can read stories over and over and over again. Day after day. You can focus on the art one day, words another day, story the next. For bigger kids, you can practice your inflection while reading. You can choral read. You can do it at the library. You can can do it in a new place altogether. There are lots of possibilities - and we'll get to them. But one of the best is, handing reading aloud to your kid off to your partner.

I love reading. And, I love reading to Liliana. I love getting lost in the story - getting loud, whispering, pointing out pictures, catching funny words in a story and seeing the bigger picture. I love listening to her say, out loud, the parts of stories that she knows - showing me that she's latched on to a story. I used to love reading to bigger kids and middle school kids because they get so into a story. You can see them analyzing its believability as you read it. You can see the wheels turning.

And sometimes, Dads are the best to get those wheels turning.

By second grade, most students start to identify reading as a feminine activity. Moms do the bulk of the reading aloud at home and many elementary school teachers are women. Boys see girls reading more at school and this contributes to the cycle. 

And it follows, fathers only read to their children an average of 15% of the time. Jim Trelease, in The Read Aloud Handbook, posits that boys who are read to by their fathers enjoy higher reading achievement scores. And sons who see their fathers read recreationally, read more themselves. Makes a lot of sense.

So, what's the big deal? This is not new, but girls are outperforming boys in overall reading achievement. Anecdotally, I always had a harder time getting my middle school boys to read for fun. And, I'm not the only one - engaging boys in the classroom is a topic of discussion for many teachers.

Much of this is due to the differences in motivation to read, having good reading choices and having good reading role models. Studies show girls are more intrinsically motivated to read and have an easier time finding books to read. Boys have a harder time and start to shy away from reading in the classroom (and at home). A lot of my boy students wanted to read about dinosaurs and sports and that starts to wear thin after awhile.

Boys also perceive themselves to have a lower ability to read than girls. This perception of lower ability starts early in elementary school and persists through to high school and you guessed it - this perception concurs in timing. It's right when reading is identified as a girls' activity. 

Let's make it an everybody activity. And, let me amend my earlier statement.

​Mom, hand off the reading aloud time every once in awhile because Dads who read to their kids and read recreationally in front of their kids are the most awesome. Dads who read to their boys have an extra level of awesome added on.

Enjoy!

And, in case you're wondering, it's Judy Blume's, Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, that's getting those two reading goofballs laughing. And, Joe will read it to Liliana for real one day. 

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