Banned Books Awareness: “The Great Gatsby”

November 25, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 5

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, did not receive much attention when released in 1925 until after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, when reprints in 1945 and 1953 found a wide readership. Today it is considered one of the “Great American Novels” and a literary classic- the Modern Library, for example, […]

Banned Books Awareness: “Les Misérables”

November 11, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 4

I was searching literary lists trying to decide which novel to cover this week when I saw something that made my jaw drop and my head shake in a bewildered double take- Les Misérables, the classic novel by Victor Hugo about the trials and tribulations of an intertwined group of people during […]

Banned Books Awareness: “Bridge to Terabithia”

November 4, 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro 18

Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia is a 1977 children’s literature classic about two fifth-graders, Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke, who create an imaginary kingdom named Terabithia in the woods where they rule as king and queen and where the only limit is their imaginations. Inspiration for the novel resulted from […]