Celebrating Banned Book Week

Live Dangerously!
Sharpen Critical Thinking

Read a Banned Book

 Evelyn Smith

The American Library Association periodically releases a list of the most challenged books in libraries in the United States reported to the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. The following list from the ALA’s Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom gives the 100 most challenged books the years 1990-2000. Most adults and college students should recognize some titles that have made a required reading list.

American Library Association. (2013). frequently challenged books.  Banned & Challenged Books.  Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association.  Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics

Developing Critical Thinking

& Writing Skills

A free press and freedom of speech require an informed citizenry to develop critical thinking skills, so individuals can decide for themselves the ideas they want to embrace and those they want to reject. 

Texas Library Association

Banned books. (2013). Aurora University.  Retrieved from http://libguides.aurora.edu/content.php?pid=63503&sid=3127226

This Aurora University Web site asks readers to develop their critical thinking skills as opposed to banning books that individuals disagree with for various reasons.

Critical thinking I. (n. d.).  Study Guides and Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.studygs.net/crtthk.htm

This self-help guide directs readers and listeners to identify what they already know about a topic, to analyze the opinions and prejudices they already have about it, and finally to locate resources for future study.

Dogra, Aastha.  (2010, October 14).  Critical thinking exercizes.  Buzzle.  Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/critical-thinking-exercises.html

To think critically, readers and listeners need to develop critical thinking skills, so they can tell the difference between fact and opinion and understand how others might slant a lecture, a television or radio show, or a Web site to induce an audience to accept only one side of an argument.  Applying critical thinking skills allows individuals to make objective decisions, even though games, puzzles, and brain teasers can hone reasoning abilities. 

Rhetorical fallacies. (n. d.).  Undergraduate Writing Center.  University of Texas—Austin.  Retrieved from http://uwc.utexas.edu/handouts/rhetorical-fallacies/

This University of Texas handout defines the standard list of emotional, ethical, and logical fallacies that don’t allow for an exchange of ideas. 

____________________

Games Sharpen Deductive Reasoning Skills

•        Crossword and jig-saw puzzles

•        Riddles

•       Suddoku

•      Chess, checkers, backgammon, and Battleship

Check to see if your local public library offers children the opportunity to enhance their reasoning power by playing games.

 

 

For Your Bucket List: 

Novels with Censorship Themes

Atwood, Margaret. (1986). The Handmaiden. Toronto:  McClelland & Stewart.

After a theocratic dictatorship has overthrown the United States government, a concubine named Offred, kept by the ruling class as a breeder, tells in a series of flashbacks about hers loss of autonomy, her failed escape, and her indoctrination as a handmaiden  .

Bradbury, Ray. (1953).  Fahrenheit 451.  New York: Ballantine

 

In this mother of all censorship-themed novels, friends and family turn in to the authorities a fireman whose job it is to burn books after he starts reading confiscated materials.

Hrabal, Bohumil. (1976). Too Loud a Solitude. New York: Harcourt.

In this first-person novel written while Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet Bloc, a supposed idiot employed as a “paper crusher” uses his job to collect rare and banished books.

Huxley, Aldous. (1932).  Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus.

In 632 A. F., that’s After Ford, subconscious recordings control the thought processes of a consumer society while they sleep. 

Le Guin, Ursula K. (2000). The Telling.  New York: Harcourt.

Since the state has outlawed all traditional beliefs and practices, resistance takes the form of storytelling in this dystopian novel. 

 

Zamyatin, Yergeny.  (1924). We. Translated from the Russian by Gregory Zilbosig.  New York:  E. P. Dutton. 

 

Translated from a Russian edition,  the novel We tells the tale of D-503 who lives in a country where the buildings are constructed entirely of glass, "The Tablet" monitors every aspect  of life, and secret police and spies keep close watch over all citizens.