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When are adults going to figure out that banning books doesn’t work? Condemn Judy Blume’s Forever or Cormier’s The Chocolate War, and soon every kid’s secretly jacking off under the covers with a flashlight and a copy of the forbidden tome poached from the ‘Net. Case in point: After being ditched by two schools in New York and Massachusetts, sales of Rent screenwriter Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 cult coming-of-age classic The Perks of Being a Wallflower skyrocketed. In the book, partially inspired by The Catcher in the Rye, a shy high school student named Charlie talks candidly about teen sex, rape, and experimenting with drugs in a series of letters to an anonymous friend. The book made the 2007 list of the Top 10 Most Banned Books, which basically guarantees its success for years to come. Chbosky, who went on to create the short-lived TV series Jericho, signs a new trade-paperback edition of Wallflower at Changing Hands Bookstore.
Sat., Feb. 21, 2 p.m., 2009
