Rudolfo Anaya on Heritage, Inspiration and Bless Me Ultima

Hello ladies!

While we head into the second half of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15), I'd like to share another author interview with you.  I'm sure that many of you have read or heard of Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me Ultima (included in our Hispanic Heritage Month display). In this interview, Anaya talks about how his heritage influenced the writing of Bless Me Ultima and gives an explanation striking in similarity to the snippet below of Sandra Cisneros.






Happy Reading,
Miss Kenny

A quick followup:

Don't forget that it is still Banned Books Week!   Bless Me Ultima caused a great controversy when it was banned from Norwood, Colorado schools in 2005. The superintendent of schools confiscated two dozen copies of Anaya's novel and threw them into trash cans. Parents in the school district were then allowed to retrieve the books from the trash and destroy them. The superintendent later apologized for his actions and admitted that he had never even read Bless Me Ultima.

Banned Books Week

Hello ladies!

Welcome to Banned Books Week. This celebration of the freedom to read and the First Amendment runs from September 25 - October 2, 2010 (the last week of September every annually). Intellectual freedom, or the freedom to express ideas and access information and ideas regardless of if they are considered unpopular, lays the foundation for Banned Books Week.

Books that have been challenged or banned are featured during Banned Books Week. These books have been challenged for a wide variety of reasons ranging from portrayal of families to use of profanity. You may be surprised to read how many challenged or banned books you have already read on the American Library Association's list of  Banned or Challenged Classics.

If you are interested in learning more about Banned Books Week visit the American Library Association's Banned Books Week Site or Banned-Books.com.

In celebration of this week we have put a display of banned books in the library.  This display includes a mixture of classics you have read in class and popular fiction. All of these books have been included on the American Library Association's  lists of the most frequently banned and challenged books for the past three years.

Our display titles include:  

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain
• Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver   
• Anne Frank: the diary of a young girl
• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kinsolver
• Beloved by Toni Morrison  
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison  
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier 
• The Giver by Lois Lowry 
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling 
• How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold   
• My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult  
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck  
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving   
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
• The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer
• Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the west by Gregory Maguire

Enjoy Banned Books Week!

Happy (free) Reading,
Miss Kenny