Class Number Two

Tonight was our second meeting for LIB 5160.  My group presented on comics and graphic novels and shared a number of different graphic novels for the class to check out.  Everyone also shared information about the banned books they read.  Several of the books mentioned were books I had already read: ttyl, Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, and The Kite Runner, for example. The variety of banned books was interesting: some were primarily for entertainment (like ttyl and Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging), while others were more thought-provoking (like Unwind and The Kite Runner). Regardless of the differences, however, all had been subject to censorship.  So often it seems, too, that people want to censor books that they haven't read, complaining about foul language or sex scenes that upon actually reading the text don't seem to exist or simply listening to what others have said or written about a particular text but never reading the book itself to make a personal judgement. To close the night, we met in groups to discuss our ya articles and award winners. I really enjoyed discussing these in small groups so that we were able to have a more in depth conversation than whole class discussions sometimes allow.  It was great, too, to hear about more books that I can read this summer for class and share with my students this fall.