The Hunger Games; Women Authors Prominent on The ALA List of Banned Books

I’d love to see some charts as to what areas asked for these books to be removed the most often.  Not that I can’t guess, of course. 

It’s be interesting to see if certain books were banned/challenged in different areas, or all pretty much by the same pack of boobs.

I’m also intrigued to see none of the Harry Potter books on the list.  That may be because they’re not new titles, but more likely because people are more frightened by poo-poo words and frank discussions of the naughty bits than they are of witchcraft.

I’m curious if other democratic countries have these kinds of lists and what books are on them and whether or not they’re similar in theme to the ones listed above.

Hunger Games has satanic/occult themes?

“…had less female than male authors…”

The word you’re looking for here is FEWER, not less. 

Yeah, I’m that person today.

How on Earth is Hunger Games anti-ethnic, anti-family, and occult/satanic?

Also, I love how To Catch a Mockingbird is labeled as being challenged because of “racism” while the sex education book is labeled as challenged because it involves “sex education”.

Whoever is challenging these books probably needs to read more books in general…

It must be disturbing to be in the ALA and watch this list grow each year…

Probably because whoever was reading them was so backwater in mentality that they think science = magic.

Well this does makes sense. Everyone knows we ladies are only supposed to write about light, fluffy topics like shopping too much or relationships. And every once in a while, if we’re good they’ll let us have a book about being a bounty hunter but only if the heroine is completely bumbling and still reliant on men for support and knowledge.

Really?
I thought it was because, “OMG NO ONE GOES TO CHURCH THAT’S EBIL!!!  IF THEY DON’T GO TO CHURCH THEY’RE SATANISTS!!!”

Didn’t Katniss become an alcholic too in the second book for a little bit? Or was that a fanfic, I read… ._.

This reminds me of the criticism Shirley Jackson got from her mother after her short story, “The Lottery”, was published:

“Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker. It does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don’t you write something to cheer people up?” 

A lot of things happen in fanfics, I’m sure…

Peeta…Gale…Haymitch…Gale again…Finnick…

This list is ridiculous. None of these books are unsuitable for their age group, because they deal with these sort of things in everyday life. We all know about these things and we all know it’s out there. “Sheltering” teenagers by keeping them away from books about it is just plain stupidity. There is no way to avoid the topic and with the exception of To Kill A Mockingbird, none of this is required reading, so if people want to read it, than they can read it.

Considering the number of times “religious vewpoint” was listed, I doubt it’s some conspiracy by the religious. 

 Korean “manga”, for what it’s worth, is called “manhwa” . . . not exactly an end-of-the-world kind of point, but really, the sort of thing a geeky blog should be up on! ;]

As a librarian, and a teen librarian no less, the age range which has the most books challenged, it’s always fascinating but not particularly surprising as to what’s been challenged.

If you want the complete information on why titles have been challenged, and where, the ALA provides this in their handouts every year during Banned Books Week at the end of September.  The lists from the past year (and previous years) can be found here:
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/ideasandresources/free_downloads

She got drunk once, but that hardly makes her an alcoholic- considering the news she’d been given (SPOILERS), that she was headed back into the arena, I can hardly blame her.

I just… my mind is boggled. In what universe is ‘sex education’ a reason to get books banned?

Of these books, I’ve read like… 6. Of those the only one that I think really belongs here is Gossip Girl (and not for any of the reasons they listed). I just can’t imagine the bullying and social hierarchy craziness of the GG universe being analyzed well with middle schoolers, for example. But I really do not get TTYL. It’s written entirely in IMs! How is that NOT suited to it’s age group!?

Hey!
Just in case anyone is interested, I couldn’t find a list of ‘banned books’ in the UK, but I did come across quite a cool website/campaign which seems to do exactly the opposite: putting banned books in libraries!

http://www.banned-books.org.uk/

Yay for sensible people!

And seriously: The Hunger Games as Satanism? I’d love to read an analysis of it that explains that one!

ah man, “the perks of being a wallflower” didn’t make it to the list.  theres always next year, charlie.  :-(

A blog for prescriptivists: http://languagehippie.blogspot.com/

Conservative America.

Yeah, I’m confused, too.  I’m not even sure what “anti-ethnic” means.  If they’re objecting to the fact that Rue and Thresh both get killed while white characters survive, why isn’t that filed under “racism”?  (Perhaps, unlike Tom Robinson, no one is described as being specifically motivated by racism when they attack Rue, Thresh, and other dark-skinned characters?)

Anti-Family, while clearer, makes less sense in light of the books’ content.  Several characters risk their lives to protect their family from the cruel world around them.  The Capitol’s callous disregard for the lives of its citizens is specifically held up as an example of how ~EVIL~ it is.
Collins is quite careful, throughout, to use euphemisms:  ie “Haymitch swore.” rather than “Haymitch said ‘#$&%.’”  Again, having trouble seeing the issue with language.Finally, occult.  Given the utter lack of reference to anything supernatural whatsoever, this seems impossible to justify.  I can maybe see where the lack of explicit references might be read as some kind of promotion of atheism, but that’s such an absurdly weak case it’s laughable.  Not to mention that atheism != occultism != satanism.  All that’s there is Collins trying, perhaps a little too hard, to remain neutral on the subject of religion.The only objection that makes even a lick of sense to me is “violence” and even that, to me, is more of a “I’ll let you read that when you’re a little bit older, dear.” matter rather than “THIS BOOK MUST BE BANNED FOR THE GOOD OF EVERYONE!”Of course, I’m presuming that the people making these requests are diligent and open-minded enough to investigate the things allegedly threatening their children and not just step in line with whatever it’s trendy to condemn these days.  The occult magic thing probably came about because someone, somewhere compared Hunger Games to, I dunno, Harry Potter (perhaps both being stories that could get a younger person interested in reading) and someone just assumed that meant the two were exactly the same in every way.

Do they really get differentiated? In terms of kanji, they’re the same words. In Chinese, the same character term is pronounced “manwah” (but even in Chinese, manwah is a term that can be applied just as accurately to superhero comic books). If they follow the same general format and aesthetic, then why differentiate them by their pronunciation?

I tend to seek out banned books more and more the more ridiculous these lists get.  That campaign is awesome. :)

 Welcome to the world of American libraries.

 I think people have gotten more used to the HP books, and they aren’t at the top of the news anymore.  Most of these authors–not all, but most–are contemporary top-sellers.  Lauren Myracle gets clobbered by someone every time she has a book out–last year the National Book Award first said her book SHINE was a finalist for the YA award, then added Franny Billingsley’s book CHIME because they said Lauren’s book got on the list “by mistake”, then *asked* Lauren to remove her book, even though *they* had put it there.  It was a really smelly thing with more than a touch of them being terrified because they’d put a book about a gay-bashing on their finalist list.

This begs the question… Why are religious books like the bible (old or new) allowed? They most certainly depict offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; occult/satanic; violence!

That was a rhetorical question. We all know those that banned books are most likely christian conservatives and therefore, the greatest of hypocrites.

It’s relevant to Koreans, and it’s bigger than just this one word. Japan has a strong cultural influence on Korea for various reasons and a lot of words drift into Korean from Japanese or Koreans start using the Japanese word instead (like ramen instead of ramyun, for example, which is hilarious actually because ramen is originally Chinese!). Reducing it to a few words minimalizes how much Japan dominates Korea (and the rest of Asia) culturally, though (Japan is like the America of Asia), and because of the colonial history/WWII there’s a lot of people in Korea (usually older generations) who just fucking hate Japanese cultural influence and will get pissed at you for using the word “ramen”.or “manga”.

So there’s a bit of a cultural movement within SK for using Korean words only as a nationalistic thing. And if you do get into manwha, while they’re highly derivative of Japanese stuff, you can often spot the Koreanness through the art if you’re a big nerd about it.

Illuminating. Thank you!

No hotter place to get your explicit cheating/group/incest/rape/group rape/homosexual/beastiality/gore porn than from the Bible, I say…

Ok, how on Earth is Brave New World sexually explicit? Maybe in the 1930s, when it was WRITTEN, but the Twilight series, which middle schoolers read, is more steamy than this.