Banned Books and Why My Small Town Doesn't Seem So Backwards Anymore

It's Banned Books Week which has me thinking back on when I was in school. I grew up in what I always thought was a backwards small southern town. While I was right about that in some instances, I was wrong on others. And here's one of a few reasons why: Those banned books that I see listed so many times for crazy reasons... Our libraries always had them and we were encouraged to read them!

Insane, I know! But my little small town didn't try to keep books like The Wizard of Oz or The Color Purple away from us. Instead, they put them on reading lists & made sure we read them.

I grew up loving to read and write thanks to having parents who read to me from the time I was a baby (mostly my mom. Thanks mom!) I remember my mom, sister, and me sitting in my bed while she read us different books. It didn't matter what it was, we were always happy to hear them & read them ourselves. Never once did it occur to me back then that a lot of those books may never be read by other kids due to someone banning them. Even now it just sounds crazy to me.

So I want to say thank you to my parents & to my small town school and town libraries who carried and urged us to read the books so many other small & even large towns have banned. While my hometown may not have been & still isn't perfect, at least it rocked with the not banning of books*.

*Except for the one year when I was in 8th grade & some parents threw a fit over the Secret Garden & tried to have it banned. It wasn't, we still could check it out & even had it assigned to us because of this. Bonus points to those parents because if they hadn't thrown a fit, a lot of the kids in my Middle School wouldn't have even bothered lifting the cover. That year the Secret Garden was the hottest book & we all read it & loved it.

Did your school carry banned books? If so, what were they? Did your school or town ban books? Tell me your thoughts in the comments. I'd love to hear them!