Banned Books Book Clubs

During the Spring of 2009, the ABC's of Literacy Committee has been booktalking a selection of 5 books in adult education classrooms in the St. Louis Metro Area. The adult learners in these classrooms are then asked to choose one of the books to read as a book club in their classroom. The books are funded through a donation through LIFT-Missouri, specifically for adult learner book clubs, the Sue Gallup Book Club Fund.

The committee has book-talked the following books at St. Louis Public Schools AEL - The Adult Learning Center, Lewis and Clark Community College Adult Basic Education, St. Louis Community College AEL - Meramec and South County Campuses, and St. Louis Public Library GED class at Carpenter Branch.

You Hear Me: Poems and Writings By Teenaged Boys edited by Betsy Franco
The Giver by Lois Lowery
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
A Light In the Attic by Shel Silverstein
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

One classroom, The YMCA Literacy Council, specifically requested children's books and the adult learners chose from these titles:

Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellog
A Light In the Attic by Shel Silverstein
And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and illustrated by Henry Cole
In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

The books were chosen from the list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 2001-2008 compiled by the American Library Association. Each classroom will have the opportunity to vote on the book it will read as a group. In addition we are asking the classrooms to document their experience with digital photos and recordings of the discussion (we will provide cameras and recorders). Then a team of volunteers from each classroom will work with the committee to make a digital presentation of the process of doing the book clubs which will be shown at a celebratory event this summer.