Every year in September libraries combat censorship by highlighting books that have been challenged or banned somewhere, sometime, for some reason. It turns out our library contains lots of books some people have tried to suppress. Our display will be up for Banned Books Week starting September 26. In advance, here's a little quiz to get you thinking:
What "banned book" should I read?
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Jereld R. Nicholson Library
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The post from the organization "Safe Libraries" in response to this thread includes a statement that "No books have been banned in the USA for about half a century". However, if the American Library Association has received 513 reports in 2008 of attempts to have books removed or restricted from readers in libraries (see http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/info.html ) it appears some vigilance about protecting the right of citizens to make their own choices about information may be warranted!
The Hussein article the SafeLibraries folks mention in their post is definitely worth reading as it points out more than one side to the issue of challenges to childrens' books. Not everyone agrees about how much freedom children should have in their reading content, which makes this topic continually of interest. Who should make decisions about what each family's children are allowed to read?
For a detailed update about the ALA response to the Cuban situation mentioned by "Safe Libraries," please see:
"http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/iro/iroactivities/alacubanlibraries.cfm
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