Welcome to WordPlay, the newsletter of the UCI Writing Project. I hope that you will enjoy our latest issue, and that you may perhaps be inspired to contribute to future issues. Our goals are to provide information that may be useful and informative to our Writing Project community, as well as to maintain that community by providing a space in which we may connect through writing.
Here are some highlights from our latest issue. To read more, click on the link to the August 2022 Newsletter below.
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From the Editor
Welcome to the Back-to-School edition of WordPlay, the newsletter of the UCI Writing Project. This month I am delighted to welcome Michael Hebert as our new Director. Michael, we are thrilled that you are here. I am sure that everyone is looking forward to meeting you and working with you in the coming year… A new school year is always exciting, challenging, and a little scary for everyone involved. I hope that this month’s WordPlay will give you some food for thought as well as some ideas for your classroom… |
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From the Director
Dear UCI Writing Project Community, I’m thrilled to be stepping into my role as the new Director of the UCI Writing Project! Over the last few weeks, I’ve started meeting some of the people that are a part of this wonderful community. I actually had the honor of stopping by both the Summer Institute and the Summer Youth Program to see some of you in action this summer. I witnessed amazing writing activities, collaboration, sharing, and learning. Michael Hebert Director of UCI Writing Project |
Opinion by Carol Mooney
“Books Unite Us/Censorship Divides Us
When I transferred to Villa Park High School in 1987, I brought with me a poster from my junior high classroom: “The Most Banned Books in America.” The 100+ titles included many which continued to appear on subsequent lists during the next thirty years, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Of Mice and Men; To Kill A Mockingbird; Lord of the Flies; The Great Gatsby; The Catcher in the Rye; 1984. I can’t recall whether or not The Color Purple was there. Walker’s classic appeared in 1982, probably the date of the poster; also the year the American Library Association began tracking banned and challenged books; also the year Banned Books Week was launched in direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Island Trees School District vs. Pico that “the First Amendment limits the power of junior high and high school officials to remove books from libraries simply because of content;’’ also the year the ALA noticed an unusual surge in challenging and banning books across the country…
(Read the rest of the article in the August issue of WordPlay)
(Read the rest of the article in the August issue of WordPlay)