What's one way to get on the banned books list? Write about guinea pigs with alternative lifestyles.
What was the most frequently banned book from 1990-1999? Can classic literature, streaming video, and social networking team up to create a multimedia hybrid? And is there anything other than blind praise being said about A.S. Byatt’s Booker-nominated novel? Answers below…
- The American Library Association (ALA) is hosting Banned Books Week, an annual event to bring awareness to literary freedom and speak out about the harm caused by banning books. The ALA website features lists of the most frequently banned books and authors of the last 20 years, which are both fascinating and slightly appalling to read. What would the literary world be like if critics had succeeded in banning I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (#3 most banned 1990-1999) or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (#5)? Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, even R.L. Stein’s Goosebumps series also made the top 15. The Guardian comments on this American, book-banning past time and interviews top 10 author Phillip Pullman.
- In case you’re ready to hear something other than glowing, Booker-winning predictions about A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, The Elegant Variation reprints James Woods’ dissenting opinion from the London Review of Books. Woods critiques Byatt’s characterizations as “antiquarian, as if Woolf and Proust and Chekhov, not to mention Muriel Spark and Penelope Fitzgerald, had never existed.” We’ll see if the Booker judges agree with him next Tuesday, when this year’s winner is announced.
- Warning: the following news may disturb you. Yesterday Simon & Schuster announced it would be partnering with a California-based multimedia company to create vooks, as in, video + book = vook. These vooks will be available online, where a user can read text, watch a related video illustrating the plot, and chat with friends about the work, all at once! Somehow that doesn’t seem as relaxing as curling up on the couch with an actual book, but I’m probably dating myself. Perhaps the vook will get technology-focused kids more interested in reading, it’s just hard to imagine an illustrated, chat-enabled version of Grapes of Wrath. Jacket Copy has commentary on the project, as well as an informative video about the vook.
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