CENSORSHIP AND ITS’ EFFECTS ON STUDENTSBy Travious Mitchell

ABOUT THIS WEBSITE• This website is about censorship and the problems that students face

because of censorship. My product is that of an article in an educational magazine and I also aim to solve misconceptions about censorship, I will discuss three books and explain why they are banned, and why they should not be banned.

BANNING BOOKS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD• Author: Harper Lee (1926-2016)• Published: 1960• Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1961), Brotherhood Award

of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961), Paperback of the Year (1962), Alabama Library Association Award (1961)

• Facts about the Book:• Adapted into a movie, of the same name, starring Gregory

Peck in 1962. Overall, the movie has over 20 awards.• To Kill a Mockingbird was based on Lee’s childhood in

Alabama.• Lee’s latest novel, Go Set a Watchman (2015), is a sequel to

To Kill a Mockingbird. It is set 20 years after the events in the previous book, but Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman years before she penned To Kill a Mockingbird, but decided to release it almost 60 years later.

THE GREAT GATSBY • Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)• Published: 1925• Awards: • Facts about the Book:

• The book initially sold poorly, only selling fewer than 25 thousand copies by Fitzgerald’s death on December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald passed away believing he was a failure. In 2016, more than 25 million copies have been sold worldwide, 15 million sold in North America alone.

• The book’s popularity came during World War II• The Great Gatsby sells more than half a million copies a

year. • Gatsby has many adaptions, but the most famous is

probably the movie of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the titular character.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (OR THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL)

• Author: Anne Frank (1929-1945)• Published: 1947• Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Drama• Facts bout the Book:

• The Diary of Anne Frank has many adaptions including movies, plays, and specials centered around the author’s life and time spent in the concentration camp.

• Anne’s father, Otto Frank, is the one who got the diary published into a book after the death of his family.

• Since the book’s publication almost 70 years ago, there have been over 30 million copies of it sold worldwide.

GLOSSARY• Ban- the removal of something• Challenge- when a person or group attempts to have something removed, or having access to

something restricted• Composing Processes- the use of multiple strategies to conceptualize, develop and finalize

projects • Critical Reading- the ability to analyze, sysnthesize, interpret, and evaluate ideas, information,

and texts• Critical Reflection- a writer’s ability to articulate what they are thinking and why• First Amendment- an amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteeing the rights of

the freedom of assembly, press, religion, and speech • Knowledge of Conventions- the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres, ans

shape the readers’ expectations• Rhetorical Knowledge- the ability to identify and apply strategies across a range of texts and

writing situations