A. L. Kaplan

Tag: Banned books

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Handmaid’s Tale

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read: The Handmaid’s Tale

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    The Handmaid’s Tale

    Margaret Atwood

    Here is another very relevant book. I didn’t read this one until earlier this year.  Margaret Atwood is a visionary.

    In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

    Banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10-8-25

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10-8-25

    Exercise Your Rights:

    Read Banned Books

    Animal Farm

    George Orwell

    George Orwell has the distinction of having two great books on this list. And yes, I read this one in HS.

    A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned-a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published fifty years ago, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece has meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

    Animal Farm has been banned or challenged globally for various reasons, including its critique of communist regimes in places like the Soviet Union and Cuba, and its perceived promotion of mass revolt and communist politics in the U.S. during the Cold War. In some Islamic countries, like the United Arab Emirates, it was banned for containing imagery, such as pigs and alcohol, that conflicts with Islamic values.  

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/7/25

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/7/25

    Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books

    1984

    George Orwell

    Another HS classic read. 2+2 does not =5

    This one really stuck with me and feels even more relevant today.

    A masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching. Thought Police, Big Brother, Orwellian – these words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984. The story of one man’s Nightmare Odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory 1984 is a prophetic haunting tale More relevant than ever before 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable the destruction of truth freedom and individuality.

    1984 has been challenged or banned for its social and political themes, including explicit depictions of totalitarianism, government surveillance, and rebellion, as well as for its sexual and violent content. Some critics also objected to its perceived pro-communist or anti-communist ideology, even though Orwell intended it as a critique of any authoritarian regime.  

  • Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/6/25

    Banned And Challenged Books I’ve Read 10/6/25

    Exercise Your Rights: Read Banned Books

    Fahrenheit 451

    by Ray Bradbury

    I remember reading this on in H.S. and thought it would be a good book to start with.

    Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

    This book was banned and challenged because of sexual content, profanity, violence, alcohol/smoking/drug usage, blasphemy/religious viewpoints, suicide, and abortion.