I recently stumbled upon the blog of one Chris Zammarelli, who focuses on censorship and banned books on the editorial website <a href=“http://bookslut.com”>Bookslut.com</a>.  Zammarelli is not one to sugarcoat views on censorship.  In fact, the motto of the editorial columnist’s blog is, and I quote:

“If I do my job right, I’ll be creating a great reference guide of titles for kids to check out if they want to read something that will piss off their parents.”

And, ladies and gentlemen, I fell in love.

Not that I really condone upsetting parents.  After all, upsetting parents is pretty much a surefire way to lose your coveted teaching job.  No, it is not so much the idea of angering people by giving students controversial texts, it is the idea of giving the students confidence to read such texts, to forget what their elders tell them is and is not okay, and deciding for themselves whether or not they are at a high enough intellect to read them.

But I digress.

Zammarelli recently wrote a column regarding a group called AsIf!.  Here is the summary of the group’s beginnings:
In May 2005, Cary McNair told the St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Austin, TX that if they did not remove Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” from its 12th grade reading list, he would pull a donation of $3 million to the school’s rebuilding fund. St. Andrew’s board of trustees opted to leave the story on the reading list and let McNair keep his money. Board member Bill Miller said, “St. Andrew’s has a policy not to accept conditional gifts, whether it’s $5 or $500,000.”
The school’s decision caught the attention of author Lisa Yee, who posted the story on a listserv for young adult fiction authors. Two other authors had the same immediate response. Jordan Sonnenblick said, “[Mark Williams] and I posted back at the same time, ‘We need to all send books to that school to support them.’”
With that, AS IF! (Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom) was born. Forty young adult fiction writers agreed to send signed copies of their books to the school to show their appreciation.
I think this is <i>fantastic</i>.  It’s just amazing to hear about authors giving back to their readers, and to schools specifically.  I feel the urging need to advertise the organization, so, I’m taking advantage of having this blog to do so.

<a href=”http://asifnews.blogspot.com/”>AsIf!</a>
<a href=”http://www.bookslut.com/banned_bookslut/2007_04_010913.php”>Complete Article</a>
<a href=”http://bookslut.com/banned%20bookslut.php”>Chris Zammarelli’s Blog</a>