Banned Books week 2024 is September 22 – September 28. Each September we honor the work of PEN America and the American Library Association in calling out censorship by addressing the reasons certain books are challenged or banned, and letting Americans know what we can do to help protect our freedom to read.

Our theme for this month is the power of words which corresponds nicely with the ALA’s theme, “Freed Between the Lines.” Some words when combined into sentences are so powerful they scare people who are afraid of new ideas or inconvenient truths.

We’ve listed the opening lines from fifteen “banned or challenged” books. Can you match the title and author to the opening line?

We’ve listed the title of the book with the author in our word bank.

Good luck and if any lines intrigue you, please consider checking the book out of your public library and reading or rereading it this month!

Answers to this quiz can be found in the last article of this issue, “Next Month in This Awful Awesome Life – October 2024 or you can click on this link to get there faster, https://www.thisawfulawesomelife.com/home/2024/9/3/next-month-in-this-awful-awesome-life-october-2024-by-fran-joyce

 

Book Title with Author:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley                  1984 by George Orwell

Slaughterhouse -Five by Kurt Vonnegut            The Trial by Franz Kafka

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher                 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence        The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

I am Jazz by Jessica Herthel

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

 

1.    “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”  

2.    “It was love at first sight.”  

 

3.    “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

4.    “It was a pleasure to burn.”

 

5.    “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and , in a shield, the World State’s motto, Community, Identity, Stability.”

 

6.    “To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.”

 

7.    “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”  

 

8.    “For as long as I can remember, my favorite color has been pink.”

 

9.    “August 25, 1991 - Dear friend, I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with the person at the party even though you could have.”  

 

10. “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested,”

 

11. “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.”  

 

12. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know where I was born.”

 

13.  “All this happened, more or less.”  

 

14.  “I was born with water on the brain.”

 

15. “Hello boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo.”

 

Sources for this quiz:

My personal Library

https://travelbetweenthepages.com/2010/09/29/great-first-lines-from-banned-books/