Every fall when Banned Books Week rolls around, I look up the list of the previous year's most frequently challenged books and try to read one off the list.  There's usually a couple of sci-fi and fantasty books to choose from: This year, for example, there's Brave New World, The Hunger Games, and (of course) Twilight.

Perhaps because a lot of them present dystopian worlds, sci-fi and fantasy books seem to frequently get the axe.  Others that have been banned or challenged in previous years include:

• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
• His Dark Materials (trilogy) by Philip Pullman
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

As you can see, there are a lot of classics and long-time favorites that end up on this list.  Vampire books and horror/sci-fi series for children (such as Goosebumps) often get targeted too.

So why read banned books?  Why make such a big deal about celebrating this week?  This is just one of the ways in which we can celebrate the free, liberal-minded country in which we live.  In many other countries, governments ban books they consider dangerous or "subversive," and then you really can't read them anymore.  Americans are lucky to live in a country where the government not only doesn't try to dictate what we can and can't read, but our culture frowns upon other people trying to influence similar decisions in libraries and schools.

As a celebration of our freedom, I encourage everyone to read a banned book -- if not this week, then sometime soon!