Urban fiction

In New York, urban fiction is finding keen readers in libraries and on the street.  Read more about it in a New York Times article here , including one mama who insists that her entire family reads for an hour every day.  Yay!

found via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 

Censorship: A golden compass and those penguins

Philip Pullman writes about book banning - The Golden Compass was on the American Library Association's top 5 list for this last year.  A quote:

 The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don't the censors realise this?

You can also find out why some real penguins from the New York Central Park Zoo whose story became a book caused such havoc among would-be censors.