Monday, Sept. 22 kicked off Banned Books Week in the IRC. Banned Books Week is a national campaign that focuses on reminding Americans not to take their democratic freedom to read for granted. Hundreds of libraries around the country, including ours here at Niles North, create displays of challenged books and host events to highlight the problem of censorship.

If you think about it, a good percentage of the books we read in English class and can borrow from the IRC are challenged books. A challenged book is any book that people have tried to remove from libraries, classrooms, or bookstores because they believe it to be harmful or a bad influence, usually for reasons like being sexually explicit, containing offensive language, or being unsuitable for the age group.

Once the book has been successfully removed or restricted, it becomes a banned book.

Some frequently challenged classics include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath, The House on Mango Street, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved, The Awakening and Lord of the Flies – all of which you’ll be reading at some point in your English class.

“Niles North is really good about letting us teach challenged books in our curriculum,” English teacher Heather Ingraham said.

Some of the most popular books for young adults to read are also frequently challenged, like Go Ask Alice, the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games, Thirteen Reasons Why, pretty much every single John Green book and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

To celebrate Banned Books Week, the IRC will be hosting a variety of events. Every day until Sept. 26, students can check out a banned/challenged book and have their name entered into a raffle for a chance to win tickets to see “The Giver”, a movie based off of a banned book. They can also have their mugshot taken for doing the “crime” of reading banned books.

It all leads up to Friday, Sept. 26 when the IRC will be showing movies based on banned books all day. These movies are a normal part of pop culture for us, so knowing that their book predecessors are frequently challenged sheds a new light on the problem of censorship.

Movie choices and reasons for being challenged include “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (racism), “The DaVinci Code” (religious viewpoint), “The Great Gatsby” (sexuality and profanity), “Harry Potter” (occult/Satanic), “The Hunger Games” (religious viewpoint, inappropriate for age of readers), “To Kill a Mockingbird” (profanity and racism), “The Outsiders” (drug and alcohol use, violence and profanity) and “Twilight” (sexuality, religious viewpoint and inappropriate for age of readers).

For more information about Banned Books Week and how not to take your freedom to read for granted, click here.