SANDERS: Is banning books more important than reading them?

Books have always been special to me.

Even those works I might find objectionable because of some offensive content would never cause me to want to burn or ban a book.

Sunday afternoon, while many of you were watching the Dallas Cowboys-Washington Redskins or some other football game on television, a group of people met at the Central Library in downtown Fort Worth to talk about Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the most banned books in American history. The discussion helped kick off Banned Books Week, which runs through Saturday.

When I was a high school student, it never occurred to me that I would spend part of my adult life defending Twain and his classic novel. Back then I never thought I would need to do that, even though Huckleberry Finn has been controversial since its publication in 1884.

It is most often challenged these days because of the racial stereotypes and the use of that word — you know, the one that has been abbreviated to simply "the N-word."

Last year, I weighed in on a controversy in the Birdville school district after one black student’s parents and a quickly organized community group demanded that the book not be taught in the district.

I said then, as I have said to other schools when the issue arises, that you can’t teach American literature without teaching Huckleberry Finn, and you can’t teach the book without teaching Twain.

For years, I’ve collected books, and a few of my most prized possessions are works that many people might find offensive.

This summer, when I conducted a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (in conjunction with the Kara Walker exhibit), I took along my illustrated copy of the book that was published in 1896, the year author Harriet Beecher Stowe died.

One of the books I keep in a glass case, partly because it was picked out by my then 5-year-old son as we visited an old book store, is Helen Bannerman’s The Story of Little Black Sambo. That’s a book whose very title still upsets people, many of whom have never read it and only know the story from some early cartoon shows.

Speaking of controversial titles, consider Ten Little N-----s by Agatha Christie, first published in 1939. A year later, when it was distributed in the United States, the title was changed to And Then There Were None. I have copies of both.

I also hold dear my first edition copy of The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr., the 1905 book upon which the movie The Birth of a Nation was based 10 years later. The subtitle of that book, by the way, is An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Some might find it ironic that a black man would have that book.

My reason for revealing some of the titles in my collection is simply to say that no matter what the subject matter and no matter whether there may be words some find offensive, I will fight against the banning of any book.

And that brings me to the latest annual report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, "Free People Read Freely: A Report on Banned and Challenged Books in Texas Public Schools."

The good news is that the number of challenges to books in Texas this year is down from last year. The bad news is that there are still too many people wanting to censor literature.

"There were only 43 school districts reporting 102 challenges in the 2007-2008 academic year, while last year saw 67 school districts reporting a sum of 116 challenges," the report stated.

It went on to say, "Indeed, both the rate of challenges resulting in bans and the total number of banned books decreased. Only 27 of the 102 (26 percent) challenges resulted in a banning during the most recent school year, whereas 46 of the 116 reported challenges (40 percent) resulted in the challenged title being banned during the 2006-2007 academic year."

The districts with the most challenges were Houston (the state’s largest district), Round Rock, Mesquite and Mansfield, according to the ACLU findings. Of the 20 challenges — up from 11 last year — in Houston, the district banned two books and restricted 12. Round Rock had nine challenges, but no books were banned.

Mesquite and Mansfield had six challenges each.

"In an isolated instance of district wide censorship, Beaumont ISD banned H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights from every school library in the district," the report said.

The reasons given for challenging books include sexual content, profanity, violence, and horror and mysticism or paganism. This year, however, the "other" category was used most often. It included: "negative comments about inner-city life," "inaccurate historical information and cultural bias," "reference to common currency for North America," "atheism," "alcohol" and "gay theme."

Works challenged practically every year include Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

This year’s most challenged author, with five, is Philip Pullman for The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife, with objections to both because of "mysticism or paganism," "atheism" or "anti-Christian sentiment," the report said.

Obviously parents have a right to decide what they want their children to read. But others don’t have the right to decide what I or my child should have access to in a library.

Rather than promoting the banning of books, we should be encouraging our kids to go pick up a book. And read it.