I have a memory in high school of one of my good friends who was prohibited from reading Mark Twain's Puddin' Head  Wilson because it depicted slavery.  This has always bothered me because the book was nothing more than a relfection of the time in which it was written.  Reading the book did not promote slavery or racism.  If anything, we learned how far America has come since then.  But yet that memory is there.

The thing is each year books are banned from reading lists and for a variety of reasons, some easily explained and other...well who would ban "The Diary of Anne Frank" as inappropriate for high schoolers.  Every book that is banned hurts our country.  Literature opens the mind to many worlds and when we block off or remove any work we limit the potential of children.

September 26-October 3 is Banned Book Week.  Booksellers across the nation will be promoting books that institutions have banned.  Take the time this week to read a banned book.