Researching banned books was an interesting task. Initially I thought that the banning of books was done majority in the pass and uncommon in the present but too my surprise people still continue to ban many great books. There were so many books that I read in high school as well as in middle school that were and still are labeled banned in schools. I was surprised that the Harry Potter series, Twilight series and the Unfortunate events series are banned in schools. I find it unbelievable and ridiculous because they are extremely fictional (there is no way of doing these things in real life) and very mild in terms of comparing other books and T.V. shows in their genres. In class, one of my classmates mentioned that many of the banned books are made into movies. "Since movies are presented to the public why then is the point of banning these books in the first place? ... [then later mentioned] Hollywood and many other film companies are misleading the purpose of banning books."
Furthermore, majority of the banned books we shared in class were related to sociopolitical issues like revealing sexual orientation, bad messages like running away, naivety, breaking out of jail (in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), animals are equal to humans, etc., including the 'disagreeable' norm of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender presented into society, and sexism like Witches by Roald Dahl. There were a couple of us who brought in the same/similar books: Heather Has Two Mommies, and In the Night Kitchen. Recently the most banned book listed everywhere is called and Tango Makes Three. There are some people in this country who don't even read the book and just assume that it's inappropriate in classrooms and/or libraries. There was this incident in texas where the superintendent (?) or some education authority thought that the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? was a dangerous book just because he thought that the author Bill Martin was the same communist-believer Bill Martin.
I understand why some of these books were banned, however I believe that these are the perfect books to discuss in class. These because show the best examples of the worldly issues that we face in our day-to-day lives. I feel that the only chance that these children can openly express these issues and what they believe in, are in a classroom discussion because this way everyone is in the same level and has yet to hear another point of view of the issue.
