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Read Banned Books on Your Palm

© Janice Karin

This coming week, October 23-30, is Banned Book Awareness Week. You'll be amazed at some of the books that have been banned recently in the United States - Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time, and Charlotte's Web are just a few books banned during the 1990's somewhere in the United States. I've spent the last few hours ranting on #palmchat about how insane some of the book bannings are. For instance, the town of Carlsbad, New Mexico removed Webster's Dictionary from its schools because it defined obscene words. I am particularly saddened to find that many of the books challenged today are challenged by school and public libraries. These institutions should be encouraging reading, not making moral judgements about what is and is not appropriate to read.

Because I love books and I am very depressed that this level of book banning still exists in this day and age, I thought I'd highlight some of the banned books available in Doc format. Read a banned book today.

To start, MemoWare has a small list of books banned in the US in Doc format. It is by no means comprehensive, but it does include the location and reason for challenges to each listed book.

Each of the following books has been banned. All are excellent books available for free in Doc format from MemoWare; I highly recommend reading them all:

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Selected Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm
• Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

There are many many more banned books available in Doc or other Palm-readable formats. Unfortunately, even today, chances are any book you read has been banned somewhere. There have always been people who think they know what's best for everyone else or who want to stifle individuality or protect people from things they believe are immoral or harmful in some other way. The times, they may be changing, but unfortunately human nature doesn't.

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