AISL Secondary Students Celebrated Banned Books Week!

"Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is the lie that tells us true things, over and over." - Neil Gaiman
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Our AISL secondary students celebrated Banned Books Week last week with a wide range of activities that included trivia games, a "Guess the Book" display, a video Flipgrid collaboration with students from The International School of Manilla, word searches (all words related to intellectual freedom and censorship), and more. The purpose of Banned Book Week, sponsored by The American Library Association and celebrated at many libraries around the world, is to highlight the importance of intellectual freedom and the ability to choose one's own reading material. Our Grade 8 students viewed the film adaptation of Angie Thomas' award-winning novel The Hate U Give and shared their responses via Padlet, a digital collaboration tool. This novel was the forth most challenged / banned book of 2018, yet it garnered more praise and recognition than any other YA novel the year it was published (2017).  As always, every family must judge for itself what is and is not permissible for that family and its culture, but we do not want to limit choice for others who may have different cultural / family values. We hope that the activities and rich discussions begun in the library continued around family dinner tables.

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