Banned Books

I feel super guilty. I haven't really done ANYTHING for Banned Books Week. I'm passionately against banning books, and I sit and I read all of these posts, and I don't do anything. Well, that's going to change. Right now.

First of all, let me explain why I absolutely hate the banning of books. This is for the people that work to ban books.  

What's your name? Do I know it? Do you know my name? Do you know how old I am?

Do you care!?

No. I think you would be perfectly content to live the rest of your life without that information. You don't care who I am, what I look like, what I want to be when I'm older. So why, pray tell, do you care what I'm reading? I like reading about drugs. I like reading about sex. I like reading about violence.

How does that concern you in any way?

I loved Crank by Ellen Hopkins because it showed me that drugs can turn my life into an endless puddle of turmoil.

I loved The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I simply loved it. It didn't teach me a lesson. It was pure entertainment. I loved reading it and I'm majorly looking forward to the movie. But let me tell you, I have no intentions of sticking a bunch of people in an arena and making them fight to their death.

I loved Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It shows me what our society could turn into - what our society IS turning into. Why would you ban that book? You ban it because it talks about burning books? That makes a lot of sense. Talk about the world's greatest example of irony. My class studied that book. It had a lot to offer and after reading it, I seriously felt like I learned something.

Shall I continue? I read what I want to read. You can tell your children what to read, but you cannot tell me what I am allowed to read. You're not improving the society by removing books that make teens and children think, that make them form opinions, that give them ideas. You're really not changing the world.

The truth is that those books are our reality. Teenagers do drugs. Teenagers have sex and get pregnant. Teenagers kill one another. All I, or any other teenager for that matter, has to do to see these things is turn on the news. The truth is that most kids pick up worse tendencies by going to school everyday. The truth is that if me or any other teenager finds something to read that we enjoy, a stranger that I have never met and will never meet has no right to take that away from me.

The truth is that I am a teenager. I am an individual. I have the same rights you do. Am I telling you what to read? Is it okay that your reading a book with homicide and suicide but you tell those younger than you that it isn't okay? Every human being's mind has the ability to be influenced. It doesn't matter whether you are ten or eighty.

I am not a robot. I am free to read what I please.

There was my little rant for you. Like I said, banning books is something I am firmly against. I made that banner, and I am quite proud of my work.

Tell me what you think about banning books.