9/28/09

Banned Books Week: A Quiz

The American Library Association recognizes Banned Books Week — and this year, Banned Books Week is September 26 through October 3.

So, let's test your banned books knowledge.

The quotes below were taken from among the 20 books listed at the end of this entry. Can you match the quote to its book?

Submit your answers by October 5, 2009 via e-mail (see "Contact us," right), and I will choose one person from among those who have submitted the highest number of correct answers.

The winner will receive a banned book from The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books List, 1990-99.

Good luck!


The Quotes
1. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.

2. It is like the hole in your mouth where a tooth was and you cannot keep your tongue from playing with it.

3. “I believe that love is better than hate. And that there is more nobility in building a chicken coop than destroying a cathedral.”

4. He was seething inside with new emotion. Nothing seemed very important except the Princess. He was single-minded about her. He was enchanted. He was possessed. He was in love

5. I'd soon as go to jail than take that damn relief job.

6. Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

7. It had been all right as long as they could laugh at me and appear clever at my expense, but now they were feeling inferior to the moron. I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies.

8. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corn cribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

9. My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

10. "She won't be coming down here with the spray. She'll be coming down here with a shovel. It happened to my brother. Split him right down the middle. Now I have two half-brothers."

11. We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We learned to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way, we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.

12. I expected Daddy to explain everything on the way home—all that stuff Dr. Griffith had been talking about—that I didn't understand. Instead, he and Ma argued about whose fault it was that I have something wrong with my spine until we pulled into the driveway. It was almost as if they'd forgotten I was there.

13. I was getting to where I could see the truth. Someday I'll be brave enough to speak it.

The quotes above were taken from 13 of these challenged books:
  • Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
  • Beloved
  • The Catcher in the Rye
  • The Chocolate War
  • Deenie
  • Flowers for Algernon
  • The Giver
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  • James and the Giant Peach
  • A Light in the Attic
  • Native Son
  • Ordinary People
  • The Outsiders
  • Pillars of the Earth
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • A Wrinkle in Time

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