1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series) by Lauren Myracle 2. The Color of Earth (series) by Kim Dong Hwa 3. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins 4. My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler 5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 6. Alice (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor 7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 8. What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones 9. Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily Von Ziegesar 10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The top ten most challenged books this past year were:

There are lots of ways to participate, since Banned Books Week's sponsoring organizations have lots of resources and are sponsoring hundreds of events around the country. And of course, its possible to participate via social media such as Facebook and Twitter. (You can tweet this diary, #bannedbooksweek, for example.)

The video below was created by the customers and staff of Bookman's bookstores in Arizona to help launch Banned Books Week. The video features people with cartoon light bulbs burning above their heads -- each reading a line from a banned or challenged book that highlights the importance of the freedom to read.

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A bit off of the Banned Books Week grid are other book and library battles worth noting. Libraries are, of course, sometimes a target of anti-tax Tea Partiers and local budget cutters, and so sometimes friends of the library have had to resort to creative tactics -- such as the time earlier this year when it was necessary to invite people to a book burning party to save the local library. We have also seen Christian Right provocateur Rev. Terry Jones both threaten, and ultimately to burn a Qu'ran, while in recent years, Rev. Flip Benham and Operation Rescue antiabortion activists also both tried and succeeded in burning a Qu'ran.

We can't say that it can't happen here, because it does happen here. Fortunately, the Jones and Benham book burning episodes are best seen not harbingers so much as fair warnings about the potential for worse and more. The rest is up to us.

But even as we consider the dark history of violence against books, ideas and free expression, let's join with the organizations of writers, librarians, publishers and book sellers in celebrating the freedom to read.