Whale Talk

Whale Talk has been banned in some school libraries for "racism and offensive language." Honestly, I don't understand people sometimes. The author uses no language that your everyday junior high schooler doesn't hear 1000 times a day, and the book provides a great capsule of what high school life is really like: bullies in the hall, budding romance, etc.
I sped through the book mostly over the weekend. It's a quick read, as it's a "young adult" book, and the story moves quickly through the halls of athlete-centric Cutter High School. The protagonist is a mixed-race adoptee who shuns the recruiting efforts of the big sport coaches to form a rag-tag swim team. He and the team face challenges along the way, while also confronting their inner demons. The book even came close to bringing me to tears a couple of times. Definitely recommended. If you haven't picked out a banned book for reading, you can probably find this one at your local library and read it in the time remaining this week.
Up next is Banned Book special #2, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Zamyatin was exiled by the Communists for his disruptive views, and this book was suppressed for over 60 years in the Soviet Union before it was finally published in Russia in 1988 when glasnost took hold. George Orwell acknowledged the work as inspriation for his classic, 1984.