Celebrate your freedom to seek and express ideas.

1. Celebrate your freedom to seek and express ideas. • From 2000-2009: • 1,639 challenges were in school libraries and 1,811 were in classrooms • Reasons: sexually explicit material, offensive language, violence, homosexuality, and material thought unsuited to age group.

2. Did you know that the practice of banning books has been around since 387 B.C.? Today, in all 50 states, there are cases of books being censored - either being banned, challenged or altered in one way or another. We here at Epic Reads want to celebrate Banned Books Week and help raise awareness on this subject. BANNED VS. CHALLENGEDChallenged Books: Books that people are trying to remove or restrict from schools, libraries, ect. Banned Books: If a group of people challenge a book and they win, then the book is banned and removed from public spaces like schools, libraries, ect.WHY DOES A BOOK GET CHALLENGED?The books that are challenged usually fall into three offending categories:1. The book is considered to be too sexualy explicit2. The book has offensive language 3. The book is unsuited for the age groupWHY IS THIS BAD?Ummm.....restricting what kids and teens can read? Yeah, we'd say that's a problem.

3. Offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group Budding cartoonist, Arnold Spirit, known as Junior, leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school. The bright 14-year-old was born with water on the brain, is regularly the target of bullies, and loves to draw. He expects disaster when he transfers from the reservation school to the rich, white school in Reardan, but soon finds himself making friends with both geeky and popular students and starting on the basketball team. Includes the daily struggles of reservation life and the tragic deaths of his grandmother, dog, and older sister. Junior faces the world with humor and a lot of spirit despite the handicaps of birth, poverty, and race.

4. Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

5. Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group Michael L. Printz Book AwardOutstanding Books for the College Bound-2009 Miles’ life includes challenging classes, a hard-drinking roommate, elaborate school-wide pranks, and Alaska Young, the girl rooming five doors down. Moody, sexy, and even a bit mean, Alaska draws Miles into her schemes, defends him when there's trouble, and never stops flirting with him. A drunken make-out session ends with Alaska's whispered "To be continued?" but within hours she's killed in a car accident. In the following weeks, Miles and his friends investigate Alaska's crash, question the possibility that it could have been suicide, and acknowledge their own survivor guilt.

6. Challenged because it deals with drugs, alcohol, sex, homosexuality, and abuse Since its publication, Stephen Chbosky's haunting debut novel has received critical acclaim, provoked discussion and debate, grown into a cult phenomenon with over two million copies in print, spent over six months at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and inspired a major motion picture.The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story about what it's like to travel that strange course through the uncharted territory of high school including first first dates, family dramas, and new friends. It shares those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

7. Political Viewpoint, Racism, Violence BONE is the incredible comic book saga of an unlikely hero who must save an idyllic valley from the forces of evil. In OUT FROM BONEVILLE, volume 1 of this 9-book epic, the three Bone cousins -- Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone -- are separated and lost in a vast, uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. Eventually, the cousins are reunited at a farmstead run by tough Gran'ma Ben and her spirited granddaughter Thorn. But little do the Bones know, there are dark forces conspiring against them, and their adventures are only just beginning!

8. The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by Toni Morrison. The story is about a young black girl named Pecola who develops an inferiority complex due to her eye color and skin appearance. It is set in Ohio during the years following the Great Depression. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism, incest, and child molestation, there have been numberous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.

9. High school student Clay Jensen receives a box in the mail containing seven cassette tapes recorded by his crush, Hannah Baker, who committed suicide. 13 teenagers in a small town have each been designated to listen, in secret, to a box of audiotapes recorded by their classmate Hannah. "I'm about to tell you the story of my life," she says. "More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why." Over1 MILLION COPIES SOLDA #1 New York Times and International Bestseller Drugs/alcohol, smoking, suicide, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group

10. Challenged for graphic descriptions of child abuse David Pelzer, victim of one of the worst child abuse cases in the history of California, tells the story of how he survived his mother's brutality (isolation, starvation, poisoning, and stabbing) and triumphed over his past.

11. Gruesome descriptions of combat and frequent foul language from soldiers Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry has just graduated from high school. There is no way he can afford college, and the streets are just too hard. So he signs up for the army and gets shipped off to Vietnam. In a battlefield where every move can mean the difference between life and death, he meets PeeWee, Lobel, Johnson, and Brunner. They are all there for different reasons, but now they share a dream-getting out alive! A riveting account of the Vietnam War.

12. Stuck in Neutral(challenged at a school in Texas as a “inappropriate reading assignment”) Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel suffers from severe cerebral palsy. It’s impossible for Shawn to feed himself or to hug his mom back. He can't walk, talk, or even focus his eyes on his own. But despite all these handicaps, despite the frustration of not being able to communicate, Shawn is still happy to be alive: "Somehow all the things I think about and remember turn to joy... favorite movies... pinecones... chocolate pudding... the scent of Comet in a stainless steel sink.... Life can be great, even for me. Even for me." That is why he panics when he begins to suspect that his father is thinking of killing him. Shawn knows that his father is trying to be kind; he imagines that his son's life is an endless torment. His dad has no idea of the rich life that Shawn lives inside his head. And Shawn, helpless and mute, has no way of telling him.

13. Challenged because the book is “trash” and covered with the “F” word Titus, a teenager whose ability to read, write, and even think for himself has been almost completely obliterated by his “feed,” a transmitter implanted directly into his brain. Feeds are a crucial part of life for Titus and his friends. After all, how else whould they know where to party on the moon, how to get bargains at Weatherbee & Crotch, or how to accessorize the mysterious lesions everyone’s been getting? But when Titus meets Violet, a girl who cares and challenges everything Titus and his friends hold dear. A girl who decides to FIGHT the FEED.