Student+Information

= Knowledge is Power =


 * Brochures, Pamphlets

//Kids, Know Your Rights!: A Young Person’s Guide to Intellectual Freedom//** (2007). Source: Association for Library Service to Children If you’re not sure what intellectual freedom is or why it matters, this pamphlet gives you the facts. Be in the know! Students have rights, and librarians work to protect and support your right to read and your right to access information.

(American Library Association, 2007) Read, react, and respond to this letter by Sarah McNicol, who used to be a school librarian. What do you think about her letter? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Why? What would you say to your school librarian, teachers, or principal about censorship? If you drew censorship, what would it look like?
 * An Open Letter: Teenagers' Views of Censorship in Libraries**


 * Web Sites**

First Amendment Schools Students have rights in and out of school, and this site is full of information in FAQs and a "newsmania" quiz about First Amendment rights. Do you know what your Five Freedoms are? You can find out at First Amendment Schools.

BCPS, Citizen's Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Material (1987) Did you know that anyone, including you and your family, can challenge books and other material that's in the library or used for teaching? You have the right. The link takes you to the form to start a challenge in Baltimore County (MD) Public Schools.

ALA Frequently Challenged Books List This web page allows you to search through the ever-growing list of books that are banned each year. You can search by year, author, decade or even specifically for classic works of literature. Do you like numbers? Check out these ALA-created bar graphs that statistically show book challenges.

Libraries and the 1st Amendment This site, sponsored by the McCormick Freedom Project, includes a "You be the Judge" feature that uses real First Amendment cases. You can decide and justify your decisions in the case.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read Librarians at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, created this “Homework Help” site. Use it for background information about censorship and book challenges.


 * Videos**

Banned Books Week 2009, an American Library Association promotional video featuring puppets. (About two minutes long, scroll about halfway down the page to reach the video). You can get to the same like through bannedbooksweek.org. media type="custom" key="5814935"

//And Tango Makes Activism//, about a frequently challenged children's picture book (About two minutes long.)

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//Huckleberry - Song for Banned Books Week 2008// This production has lyrics that address well known banned books and shows images to accompany them. (About four minutes long). Huckleberry (©2008 Keith Lewis & Carl Walker).

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I Am Not A Pornographer - In this YouTube video, John Green defends his book //Looking for Alaska// against arguments that the text contains pornographic material. An interesting perspective from an obviously frustrated author. (About four minutes long).

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//Censorship and Banned Books// (2009). Shows book covers and a reason the books were challenged (no audio). From New Mexico State University Library.

Read what authors and other famous people in history have said about censorship. Pick a quote and react! Find out more about who said it. What might have prompted them to make their statement? List compiled by the New Mexico State University Library.
 * Quotations about Censorship and Banned Books**


 * “[I]t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” - //Judy Blume//
 * “If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas—and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do—it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas.” - //Graceanne A. Decandidio//
 * "Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book." - //Dwight D. Eisenhower//
 * “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed." - //Benjamin Franklin//
 * "Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education." -//Alfred Whitney Griswold//
 * 'Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." - //Heinrich Heine//
 * “Information is the currency of democracy.” – //Thomas Jefferson//
 * "The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search. " - //Max Lerner//
 * "The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for an opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time." - //Joseph Lewis//
 * "If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." -//George Orwell//
 * "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." - //Voltaire//
 * “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." - //Oscar Wilde//
 * "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. " - //Joseph Brodsky//
 * “Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance." -//Lyndon Baines Johnson//
 * "Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there." - //Clare Booth Luce//
 * "We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder "censorship," we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.’ " - //David Mamet//
 * “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads." - //George Bernard Shaw//
 * "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - //Mark Twain//