Last year I read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Gossip Girl by Cecily Von Ziegesar, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam and even picked up Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Trilogy for Banned Book Week (I read a few of them in the week preceding and the week following as well). This year I have too many projects going on to be able to read that many books, but I have a few I want to get to.

This week, September 27 through October 4, I want to get to Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. A full list of the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom’s 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books can be found on their Web site. They should also be posting a list of the 10 most challenged books of last year, but they recently overhauled their Web site so I can’t find it.

I think there is nothing more dangerous in this world than trying to force your personal beliefs onto someone else. Corruption, religious wars and genocide have started for less. Americans are blessed that the very first amendment the Founding Fathers created was protecting the free exchange of ideas. While some politicians and concerned citizens would try to have you believe that censorship protects the populous, this is just not true. It stymies creativity, causes animosity and goes against our country’s fundamental belief system.

While self-censorship is a good thing (I put down the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy last year because I was not comfortable with the subject material) and parents should know what their children are reading (there is nothing wrong with a parent or teacher suggesting a book may not be age appropriate for a child), I have no tolerance for government censorship.

What will you be reading this week?