Don't Read These Books

Did you know that there have been books that were banned?

What that means is, someone found a book offensive, and declared that it should not be available, either for sale or in public libraries. It happens to this day both in other countries and in the U.S. There have even been gatherings where people piled the books up and set them on fire. These were typically religious extremists, but other groups have decided that some books were not fit to be available and burned those as well.

You might be surprised to see what some of them were, and why they were banned. Such as:

"Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury
-Oddly, this book included references to burning books.

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' by Mark Twain
-This book used the derogatory "N" word, which is highly offensive and enough in this instance, for some people, to ban the book.

"The Catcher In The Rye" by J.D. Salinger
-It is all about teenage angst (longing and confusion)


"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
-This book was thought to promote white supremacy, although it's about a white lawyer defending a black man, and also the book used the "N" word

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck
-The book was banned for using 'vulgar' language.

"Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
-It was banned because it was depressing. Seriously??

And check out some banned books that will probably surprise you more:

• The "Harry Potter" series, because it promoted sorcery and wizardry
• The Bible (still banned in North Korea)
• The Quran
• "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" because it showed young people smoking
• "Little Red Riding Hood" because she had wine in her basket (I don't recall the story mentioning the contents of the basket, but whatever)
• "Sleeping Beauty" which was thought to promote witchcraft and magic
• "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzgerald, for teaching children to spy, back-talk, and curse
• "Where's Waldo" by Marvin Handford, because in one book there is a partially-exposed woman's breast. And--so what if there is? How would anyone find it?
• "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe, because it was anti-slavery
• "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Remarque-banned for insulting the Nazis in WWII (!)

As well as more recently written books---

• "The Hunger Games"
• "Gossip Girl"
• "13 Reasons Why"
• "Twilight"
• "Captain Underpants"

Why?? Here is a source of banned books and the 'reasons' they were banned:
http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

Have you already read some of these books?  Let's hope so!!


Another list of banned books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments

Do you think some books should be banned, or not. And if so, banned by whom-who should have the power to decree a book as unfit? Why? What effect does forbidding something usually have?

And That's Just The First Line!

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."


In order to get interested in a book, it needs to have a good first line to capture your interest. These are first lines from some books you may or may not have read.  The first is from a book titled "The Go Between," and was written by L.P. Hartley in 1953. The second was from "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Hurston, and that was written in 1937.  Don't those sound interesting? Do the opening lines make you wonder what the book is about?

Which of these books have you read? Look them up in your library for some great escapes!

     1. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

      2. I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair........

     3. The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "Wild Thing!"

      4. Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.

      5.  Call me Ishmael.

      6.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

        7. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

       8. You better not never tell nobody but God. 

       9. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 

      10. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. 

      11. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

      12. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

      13. All children, except one, grow up.

      14. My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

      15. My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.

Here are the titles of the books they are from, the years written, and authors.
1-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997, J.K. Rowling
2-Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad, Day, 1972, Judith Viorst
3-Where the Wild Things Are, 1988, Maurice Sendak
4-The Giving Tree, 1963, Shel Silverstein
5-Moby Dick, 1851, Herman Melville
6-A Tale of Two Cities, 1859, Charles Dickens
7-The Red Badge of Courage, 1895, Stephen Crane
8-The Color Purple, 1982, Alice Walker
9-The Great Gatsby, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
10-The Old Man and the Sea, 1952, Ernest Hemingway
11-1984, written in 1949, George Orwell
12-To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960, Harper Lee
13-Peter Pan, 1911, J.M. Barrie
14-The Life of Pi, 2001, Yann Martel
15-A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, 2007

*Fitzgerald was from Minnesota

Here are web sites to give you some ideas for great reading:
Young Adult books:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/01/10-of-the-best-young-adult-books-of-january-2018.html

Adult books: http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/10-of-the-most-exciting-book-releases-for-2018.html



Ask your friends to recommend books they have read. If you like an author, try another book by the same author. The library website can suggest books based on your interests. And don't be shy about asking your local librarian to suggest books you would enjoy. You can re-visit books you loved when you were little (and share them!). Try a genre (type) of book you don't normally read: Science Fiction, History, Biography, Self-Help (Life advice), books about animals, Religion....categories are almost limitless...
Here's how to find different non-fiction (facts) books by their numbers:

You and your friends might have interesting books you can swap, or some titles may be available for free download. Try taking a book outside and reading there on a nice summer's day. It's way better than texting. Honest.

Words, Words, Words

Improving your vocabulary can help you understand what you read better and express yourself better, assist you in doing better on an SAT or ACT test, and hopefully, help you spell better.


Basics:

• Learn a new word often
• Look up a word you don't know
• Read!! Read a lot!!
• Be sure you understand how to pronounce the new word
• Write it down a few times
• Use the word in a sentence when you speak to someone
• Look up the meaning or origin of the word
• When you write, use the thesaurus to find a different word than you usually use
• Challenge yourself with word games
• Listen to the lyrics of a song: What do they mean to you? Why?
• Learn a word in another language. In Hawaii, 'Shaka' translates to "hang loose," or "take it easy." This is the hand symbol for Shaka:

The first dictionary was published in 1806 after 26 years of compiling words.
Currently, there are 171,476 words in the Oxford English Dictionary. Each year up to 1000 new words are added. This is often due to use in social context or to technology terms that didn't exist before. How is it decided which words make it into the dictionary? https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-words-into-dictionary

Great tips here to really learn words and retain them:
https://wordcounter.net/blog/2014/01/22/1027_25-ways-to-improve-your-writing-vocabulary.html


Here are words for the next 30 days, and thanks to Just Colleges, where you can find lots more http://justcolleges.com/college/sat-the-top-100-vocab-words/:

1. abstinence: (n) the act of refraining from pleasurable activity, e.g., eating or drinking
2. adulation: (n) high praise
3. aesthetic: (adj) pertaining to beauty or the arts

                                                          What do you think of the aesthetic of this picture by Leo Valdez?
4. amicable: (adj) friendly, agreeable
5. anonymous: (adj) nameless, without a disclosed identity
6. asylum: (n) sanctuary, shelter, place of refuge
7. benevolent: (adj) friendly and helpful

8. camaraderie: (n) trust, sociability amongst friends

9. censure: (v) to criticize harshly
10. clairvoyant: (adj) exceptionally insightful, able to foresee the future, having psychic abilities

11. condescending: (adj) possessing an attitude of superiority, patronizing
12. demagogue: (n) leader, rabble-rouser, usually appealing to emotion or prejudic
13. empathy: (n) identification with the feelings of others
14. ephemeral: (adj) momentary, transient, fleeting
15. frugal: (adj) thrifty, cheap

16. hackneyed: (adj) cliched, worn out by overuse
17. haughty: (adj) arrogant and condescending
18. integrity: (n) decency, honesty, wholeness
19. intrepid: (adj) fearless, adventurous
20. lobbyist: (n) person who seeks to influence political events
21. mundane: (adj) ordinary, commonplace
22.nonchalant: (adj) calm, casual, seeming unexcited

           They tried to get Timmy interested in Game of Thrones but he remained nonchalant...he is quite precocious, too. He already plays the kazoo with great skill.


23. precocious: (adj) unusually advanced or talented at an early age
24. pretentious: (adj) pretending to be important, intelligent or cultured
25. procrastinate: (v) to unnecessarily delay, postpone, put off
26. querulous: (adj) complaining, irritable

                                                          Ever had to deal with a querulous instructor?
27. sagacity: (n) wisdom

                                                     No one doubts the sagacity of Yoda

28. spurious: (adj) lacking authenticity, false
29. surreptitious: (adj) secret, stealthy
30. tactful: (adj) considerate, skillful in acting to avoid offense to others


What are some new words you've learned recently?

And That's Just The First Line 2.0

Is the world making you feel upset, scared, angry, powerless? Do you want something to escape and to calm you, to take you somewhere else for a while?


Read!!


What are your favorite books? Do you remember the first line of them, or any memorable lines? Why did you like them? You could consider re-reading them, or.....


Imagine how these books turn out eventually:


"A Screaming Comes Over the Sky."                                              Gravity's Rainbow
                                                                                                                   -Pynchon
"Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family
is unhappy in its own way."                                                              Anna Karenina
                                                                                                             -Tolstoy

"I am an invisible man."                                                                    The Invisible Man
                                                                                                                  -Ellison


"124 was spiteful."                                                                             Beloved
                                                                                                            -Morrison


"It was the day my grandmother exploded."                                    Crow Road
                                                                                                              -Banks

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who
discovered she had turned into the wrong person."                       Back When We Were Grownups
                                                                                                       -Tyler


"I was 17 years old when I saw my first dead body."                  Where Things Come Back
                                                                                                               -Whaley
"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns
to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."                            Mortal Engines
                                                                                                                  -Reeve

"Here is a weird one for you."                                                          Signifying Nothing
                                                                                                              -Wallace
"The magician's underwear has just been found
in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond
on the outskirts of Miami."                                                     Another Roadside Attraction
                                                                                                        -Robbins

"Dear anyone who reads this, do not blame the drugs."             Cruddy
                                                                                                      -Barry


"Pale freckled eggs."                                                                 The Conservationist
                                                                                                   -Gordimer


"It was a wrong number that started it."                                              City of Glass
                                                                                                               -Austen


And the traditional opening line that Snoopy loves so much:
"It was a dark and stormy night."                                                         Paul Clifford
                                                                                                                 -Bulwer-Lyon

Do any of these stir up some interest? Find them at your local library in the usual book form, or borrow them as e-books on your phone, tablet, or computer (did you know that ebooks take up virtually no room in your computer?) and settle in for some good reads. If you haven't used your library to download an e-book, their librarians can guide you through it, it's easy!


Many e-books are available for free download from Amazon https://www.amazon.com  , Bookbub:  https://www.bookbub.com/home/ , the Gutenberg Project. http://www.gutenberg.org/ ,Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks or at Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/free_ebooks .


If you visit one of these sites and search free classic books you will find lots of them that can be downloaded for free, such as:
Tale of Two Cities
The Great Gatsby
Pride and Prejudice
1984
The Hobbit
Jane Eyre
The Scarlet Letter
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Frankenstein
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
The Time Machine
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
--and other works by Dickens, F Scott Fitzgerald.... Look around, find something interesting, and settle in for a good read.

Little Free Libraries

Have you seen Little Free Libraries springing up around your neighborhood?


Here's their story....

Todd Bol, whose mother was a teacher, built a model of a one-room schoolhouse, put it on a post in his yard, and filled it with books to be borrowed. He built a few more and gave them away. A friend joined his effort and eventually, with organization, it became Little Free Libraries. Read more:

https://littlefreelibrary.org/history/

You can make a Little Free Library, just look on their website for how to do it.

https://littlefreelibrary.org/

The idea was to make a few books available for whoever would like to read them....

Childrens' books or adult books....

Any container can be a LFL....

Take a book, give a book.........

Let someone else enjoy a book you did.

Find something interesting..

And when you're done, return it and try a different one.

Check out a Little Free Library today!!

And That's Just The First Line!

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."


In order to get interested in a book, it needs to have a good first line to capture your interest. These are first lines from some books you may or may not have read.  The first is from a book titled "The Go Between," and was written by L.P. Hartley in 1953. The second was from "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Hurston, and that was written in 1937.  Don't those sound interesting? Do the opening lines make you wonder what the book is about?

Which of these books have you read? Look them up in your library for some great escapes!

     1. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

      2. I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair........

     3. The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "Wild Thing!"

      4. Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.

      5.  Call me Ishmael.

      6.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

        7. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

       8. You better not never tell nobody but God. 

       9. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 

      10. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. 

      11. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

      12. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

      13. All children, except one, grow up.

      14. My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

      15. My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.

Here are the titles of the books they are from, the years written, and authors.
1-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997, J.K. Rowling
2-Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad, Day, 1972, Judith Viorst
3-Where the Wild Things Are, 1988, Maurice Sendak
4-The Giving Tree, 1963, Shel Silverstein
5-Moby Dick, 1851, Herman Melville
6-A Tale of Two Cities, 1859, Charles Dickens
7-The Red Badge of Courage, 1895, Stephen Crane
8-The Color Purple, 1982, Alice Walker
9-The Great Gatsby, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
10-The Old Man and the Sea, 1952, Ernest Hemingway
11-1984, written in 1949, George Orwell
12-To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960, Harper Lee
13-Peter Pan, 1911, J.M. Barrie
14-The Life of Pi, 2001, Yann Martel
15-A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, 2007

*Fitzgerald was from Minnesota

Here are web sites to give you some ideas for great reading:
Young Adult books:

http://time.com/100-best-young-adult-books/

Adult books:
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2017

Ask your friends to recommend books they have read. If you like an author, try another book by the same author. The library website can suggest books based on your interests. And don't be shy about asking your local librarian to suggest books you would enjoy. You can re-visit books you loved when you were little (and share them!). Try a genre (type) of book you don't normally read: Science Fiction, History, Biography, Self-Help (Life advice), books about animals, Religion....categories are almost limitless...
Here's how to find different non-fiction (facts) books by their numbers:

Try taking a book outside and reading there on a nice summer's day. It's way better than texting. Honest.