My New Reading List

I read an article today about which commonly-banned books are the ones that students in schools most often request, only to be denied. I've decided that I really need to read all of these books. I've already read a good number of them, but I would like to re-read the ones that I have already read. For instance, The Giver is an amazing book, and I've been wanting to re-read it for a while now.

1. "Harry Potter" (Series) (J.K. Rowling)
2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Harper Lee)
3. "The Color Purple" (Alice Walker)
4. "The Outsiders" (S.E. Hinton)
5. "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding)
6. "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck)
7. "Goosebumps" (Series) (R.L. Stine)
8. "How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell)
9. "The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)
10. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)
11. "The Giver" (Lois Lowry)
12. "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley)
13. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (Mark Twain)
14. "Captain Underpants" (Dav Pilkey)
15. "The Anarchist Cookbook" (William Powell)
16. "Carrie" (Stephen King)
17. "Flowers for Algernon" (Daniel Keyes)
18. "The Dead Zone" (Stephen King)
19. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Maya Angelou)
20. "Go Ask Alice" (anonymous)
21. "American Psycho" (Bret Easton Ellis)
22. "The Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier)
23. "James and the Giant Peach" (Roald Dahl)
24. "The Pigman" (Paul Zindel)
25. "A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)

We read Go Ask Alice in middle school, and it was sensational then, I can assure you, but I'm really glad that we read it. I can't imagine not allowing children to read. That is so insane to me. And what, exactly, is wrong with the Harry Potter books, that children shouldn't be allowed to read them in school? If anything, all they are doing is challenging the students' will to read. Of course there's magic, but when I was little, I could tell the difference between real life and a book.

You can read the article here:

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/37480/a-long-shelf-life