Banned Books Week 2010

I would guess that not many people know that this week is Banned Book Week. I had the fun job of looking up banned books and creating a window display with the most fascinating books on the list. Here are a few I'm sure you are familiar with...

Huckleberry Finn by Twain
The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Here's another list that you may not have thought of...    

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Anne Frank the Diary of a Young Girl
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

And my top 3 favorite banned books (because of the odd reasons they were banned):

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
"Not easy to figure out why this one was banned, but it may have been that the strongest woman character marries a boring and much older man--counter to feminism."

The Merriam Webster Dictionary!!
"Banned in a California elementary school in January 2010 for its definition of oral sex. "It's just not age appropriate," a district representative said."

And finally,
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See
"This beloved children's book was banned in January 2010 by the Texas Board of Education because the author has the same name as an obscure Marxist theorist, and no one bothered to check if they were actually the same person."

I hope this list has been as interesting to you as it was to me :)

Juliet by Anne Fortier

Juliet is one of those books that probably won't get the attention it deserves. It was published in August and I was immediately intrigued by the description of it. But the cover made me skeptical because it  features a large red rose, which yells "corny love story" at anyone who picks it up. DON'T LET IT FOOL YOU!

I was completely hooked from the very first chapter. Julie Jacobs is an average 25 year old woman, who finds out that she is anything but average after her Great Aunt, and guardian, passes away and leaves her a letter, a safety deposit key, and a passport with her picture... but a different name. She learns that after her mother died in Italy, her Aunt Rose changed her name and brought her to America to shelter her, and her twin sister, from a dangerous secret. Julie, now Gulietta Tolomei, must go to Italy to see what her mother left behind for her.

Julie happens to be descended from the Juliet who inspired the famous Shakespeare play "Romeo and Juliet" and she is the first ancestor to have the exact same name. Her mother had planned it that way after convincing herself that the famous curse upon the two households was still at work centuries later. Julie is the only person capable of ending the deadly curse, but piecing together the facts she needs to do it, proves to be extremely difficult and very dangerous. The only way to ultimately end the curse is to find her Romeo, but who can she trust??

Anne Fortier has packed this fascinating historical novel full of twists and turns that kept me turning pages long after I should have been asleep!! She goes back and forth between the original Gulietta's story in 1340, and the modern day Gulietta's story constantly ending each chapter with cliffhangers that force you to read 2 more to find out what happens next! Every time I thought I knew what was really going on she'd throw in another twist to always stay one step ahead of me.

I loved everything about this book and I really hope people read it and LOVE it!! It combines history, romance, suspense and mystery and it's all set in Siena, Italy! I guarantee you will want to go there when you're done!!

Buy Juliet