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By Mom Unplugged, October 1, 2009 9:45 pm

Thank you to on-the-ball “Mom” of Mom and Kiddo for reminding me that this is Banned Books Week sponsored by the American Library Association. Between last week’s Turnoff Week, our weekend trip to Phoenix, and my littlest home with the flu, I just plain forgot.

Since Banned Books Week doesn’t end until Sunday, October 3rd, there is still time to read a banned (or almost banned) book to your children. Remind them that they have a right to read!

Did you know that there are some fantastic children’s and young adult books that have either been banned, or attempted to be banned?

(TIP: I love these books, but obviously please make make sure that the subject matter meets with your child’s maturity level before offering as a reading choice. My children are still too young for some of these, but I have most of them saved from my childhood - or later - because I enjoyed them so.)

Here’s a list of some of my favorites:

• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

• The Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder

• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also by Roald Dahl

• The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

• Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola

• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

• Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings, again, by Shel Silverstein

• The Giving Tree, yet again by Shel Silverstein (you naughty boy!!)!

• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (again)

• 1984 by George Orwell

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

• All of the Harry Potter Books by J.K. Rowling

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The oddest ban that I found?

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

or maybe

• Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (you can get one of these dictionaries for as little as $0.01 plus shipping on Amazon if you want to read through it and try and figure what all the fuss is about)

And in my opinion, the most hypocritically banned young adult book of all time:

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

There are many more:

MORE BANNED BOOKS LINKS:

Challenged Children’s Books

Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States

Amazon: So You’d Like to Read Banned Children’s Books

Banned Books: From Harriet the Spy to Catcher in the Rye

S-Collection: Challenged Children’s Books

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By Mom Unplugged, September 30, 2009 6:55 pm

There it is. The Enchanted Bookshelf. It looks pretty ordinary, doesn’t it? And believe me, it is not usually that tidy. Despite its modest appearance, this humble bookshelf has been key in inspiring my 7 year-old son to read.

The bookcase is right next to his bed, within arm’s reach. He doesn’t even have to get out of bed to pull a book off the shelf. I keep it well-stocked with a varied supply of books of different degrees of difficulty.

Obviously I make sure that there are many books at his reading level. I also throw in some that are more difficult in order to pique his interest and tempt him to challenge himself. I add a few that are below his level for those days when he wants to breeze through an old favorite. I’d rather have him read something a little easy on occasion, than read nothing at all. On the bottom shelf I put a few big, heavy kids’ encyclopedias and books with lots of photographs that are fun and interesting to leaf through.

The shelf’s spell has brought my son’s reading level from barely Bob Books last fall to beyond the Magic Tree House Series (by Mary Pope Osborne) in just one year. In fact he recently devoured Vacation Under the Volcano non-stop and proudly announced that he has now read all 28 books in the original Magic Treehouse Series. For the last few nights, he has read The Children of Noisy Village (by Astrid Lindgren). Now he appears to have moved on to Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, which is one of the more challenging temptations on the shelf.

If you want to give this a try, here are some tips:

• Shelf must be within arm’s reach of bed and preferably facing the bed so the titles are easily visible.

• Keep it well-stocked.

• Vary the reading level. Most books should be at your child’s current level, plus some more difficult books, and some easier books.

• A basket of children’s magazines on the top is a nice touch and adds even more variety to the reading selections.

• Don’t let the shelf stagnate. Keep restocking with new books as your child’s skills improve.

• If there is a TV in your child’s room, get rid of it so reading is the ONLY available activity in bed! (Plus, the electromagnetic waves from the TV will suck all the magical energy out of the Enchanted Shelf. :-) )

Comments (9)

By Mom Unplugged, November 19, 2007 11:25 pm

Tonight I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered an interesting story that fits right in with Unplug Your Kids so I absolutely have to report it for those who might have missed it. Sorry to postpone my next Christmas/Holiday Unplugged post for anyone who really cares, but I’ll get it up tomorrow morning or evening.

The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) has just released today, a new study on the reading habits of Americans: children, teens, and adults. Here are some of the findings:

++ Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years

- Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier.

- Among 17-year-olds, the percentage of non-readers doubled over a 20-year period, from nine percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

- On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.

++ Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved.

- Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.

- 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.

- Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.

According to NPR, an earlier NEA study was criticized for only considering adults reading literary works, fiction, poetry, and drama. This time the study also included all ages, and all reading materials, including newspapers, magazines, and even the internet. The results were the same.

There seems to be a decline in pleasure reading beginning in middle school and continuing on through high school and adulthood. People read less and less…and therefore, read less and less well. This affects academic and economic performance, as well as civic and political contributions.

Of course the obvious culprits appear to be electronic distractions, however some speak of a positive “New Literacy” among today’s youth, “a literacy not limited to books.” Dana Joya, Chairman of the NEA debunks this claim. Apparently all the kids tested engaged in the same sort of electronic activities, but those who READ BOOKS, did better on the tests.

Other interesting stats from the study :

55% who read below “the basic level,” were unemployed.

Only 3% of prison inmates are proficient readers.

(and I have to say I have not read the complete study so as to be able to exactly define the terms “basic level” and “proficient,” but at least this gives you a general idea).

The final tidbit that caught my attention from this report was that the NEA found that socio-economic status did not have an impact on the amount that children read, rather the defining characteristic, was the number of books in the home.

Links:

NPR story: Reading Study Shows Remarkable Decline in US

NEA: 11/19/07 New Reading Study Summary (and link to download full report)

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com and photographer jeltovski