Banned Books week

Banned Books Week 2024

Celebrations, Little Free Library, Reading

Welcome back, readers! This year the Camelback Villas Little Free Library will be kicking off Banned Books Week with a readalong on Sunday, September 22 from 10 am to 12 pm. Bring your own banned book or choose one from the Little Free Library, then settle down in the shade for a leisurely morning read!

Blankets and popsicles will be provided 🙂

What kind of books are we talking about?

Banned and challenged books include literary classics, graphic novels, and current bestsellers, many of which feature BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ characters. Check your bookshelves against this list of the last decade’s most-banned books from the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF); chances are you have already read a banned book!

Book bans increased 65% from 2022 to 2023, making 2023 the year with the most books banned in the OIF’s 20 years of tracking bans. Book bans are often directed at public libraries, with school libraries being another frequent target. Yes, the places where people with the least access to information go to get their books.

Sometimes, book bans have called attention to books that are genuinely problematic, such as Skippyjon Jones. If a book is problematic, should it be banned? Not at all! When you find yourself reading a book and going hey, this doesn’t feel right, learn more about the author–and about the people affected by the author’s work. Discuss why you think the book is problematic with friends and family. Representation is an ongoing issue in publishing. In trying to include characters from groups to which they do not belong, authors can miss the mark, widely. Seek out books by authors whose experiences are represented in the stories they tell. And keep reading!

So why are we reading banned books?

You don’t have to like every book you read, or even agree with it. But by continuing to read, ask questions, and discuss who gets excluded when books are banned, we can build a world where there is space on the shelves for everyone’s story.

Learn more about book bans by the numbers here

See the top ten challenged books of 2023 here

Banned Books and Scary Stories

Little Free Library

It’s nearly the most wonderful time of the year: October! The Camelback Villas Little Free Library is gearing up for fall with two themes, Banned Books and Scary Stories.

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

John Stuart Mills, On Liberty

Banned Books Week is October 1-7, and all week we will be offering popsicles, a reading blanket, and a library stocked with banned books! A little daunted by the idea of reading a banned book? Check out the American Library Association’s archive of most-challenged books: childhood classics, high school English standards, and current bestsellers you probably already have on your shelves are among the ranks of frequently banned and challenged titles. Intrigued? A longer list of banned and challenged titles is available from the National Council of Teachers of English.

After a we spend Banned Books Week cultivating a livelier impression of truth, we will be swapping out our inventory to all in on Halloween! (Hey, the Scary Stories series was frequently banned, there might be some crossover titles!) Come by for all things mysterious, creepy, and enchanting, but don’t forget to read with your night light on!

Banned Books

Celebrations, Reading

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I don’t know about yours, but my September absolutely vaporized, taking with it the opportunity to blog Banned Books week properly.

For several years now, I have made a point of reading a banned book to celebrate my right to read whatever I want. Unfortunately, most books have been banned because they address big topics, and are consequently long and dense. While I adore long and dense books, the middle of the semester is not a particularly conducive time for reading them. So I usually read banned children’s books. This year, emboldened by the realization that I do like some graphic novels, I read Persepolis. It was a wonderful and thought-provoking story, and I loved how the clean drawings heightened the impact of Satrapi’s stories of her childhood. Although dealing with dark, violent events, she did not sensationalize her subject: the perspective was always of an adult remembering her childhood, never of the Activist On Soapbox.

Of course, now I need to read Persepolis 2.

ALA tells us that Persepolis was banned for “graphic images” (pause here to appreciate irony), but what about all those other banned books? At the beginning of the week, I helped build a Banned Books week display based on each of four themes named in the Banned Books series from Facts on File: Social, Political, Religious, and Sexual grounds.

Well, I tried to help. Unfortunately, my anthropology training kicked in, and everything became Social. Political opinions and appropriate expression thereof? Determined by the most powerful group in a society. Inappropriate religious beliefs? Society polices that one too. Sexuality and how much is ok to publish where? Society calls those shots too. Sure, in some cases that society is small–just a handful of noisy parents in one school–but if they want a book banned, they’ll try.

I had a lovely conversation with librarian leading the display about Censorship and Society, and then, feeling that perhaps I should do the job I had been asked to complete, used the Banned Books series’ judgement on whether banning was social, political, or religious. We ended up with a balanced display that was well-browsed and borrowed from. Score one for freedom of speech.

But the next day was in, I looked at the display, and my inner anthropologist got up on her soapbox to shout “It’s all social!”