The Great Gatsby. To Kill a Mockingbird. Catcher in the Rye. Animal Farm.  Can  you imagine not being allowed to read these classics because your school has banned them? People all around the world  do not have the freedom to read because books have been banned. Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read.

Banned Books Week happens at the end of September every year. This year, it is taking place Sept. 25th to Oct. 1st.

Banned Books Week started in 1982. It was created to try and raise money to stop schools and libraries from banning books and to celebrate reading. According to bannedbooksweek.org, there have been 11,300 books that have been challenged in schools and libraries since 1982. Books that have been banned range from classics to children’s books to young adult novels.

In 2015, the #1 challenged book was Looking for Alaska by John Green. The reasons behind the banning, according to ala.org,  include “offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.” Most books that were challenged in 2015 were challenged for these reasons as well. If  a book could in any way influence the reader to do something  against social norms, it is most likely banned somewhere.

When asked if she thinks it is right that books can be banned, Mrs. Costello said, “I have an issue of removing books from libraries, because the person with the concern can merely not read it. Usually, however, the person with the concern doesn’t want other people to read the book, and I have a major concern with other people telling me what I can and cannot read.”

A lot of books in 2015 that were banned include the topics of suicide or the LGBTQ+ community. In today’s society, people fear these topics. However, to someone struggling with depression or who is part of the LQBTQ+ community, these books would most likely help, not hurt them.

At Pentucket, English teachers read a lot of books that have been banned elsewhere. For example; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Dr. Bent, an English teacher at Pentucket, thinks we should continue to teach banned books because “they are good books … and if we actually gave into the banned books list, we would be reading nothing.”

Banned Books Week, happening Sept. 25 to Oct.1, puts these banned books in a new light to remember how important books really are.

To read more about Banned Books Week, check out http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/