Banned Books Week @ your library^®

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Let Us Amaze You @ your library ^™

Banned Books Week
Celebrate Your Freedom to Read

September 21-28, 2002
Let Freedom Read: Read a Banned Book

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin.

"The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's classic novel about the Depression, had a rocky introduction in American libraries back in 1939. It was burned by the East St. Louis Public Library, barred from the Buffalo Public Library and banned in Kansas City, Mo., and Kern County, Calif. Even today his books continue to be challenged. According to the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom, "Of Mice and Men" was the second most challenged book of 2001, after the Harry Potter series." (ALA Press Release)

Banning of books by John Steinbeck and other writers is an example of what Banned Books Week is all about: "the freedom to read what we choose, and the vigilance we must maintain to assure that this freedom, which can be fragile, lives on."

"Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them." (ALA Banned Books website).

Banned Books Week 2002 has the theme "Let Freedom Read: Read a Banned Book." Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Library Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

"The ability to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values. Censorship doesn't only ban books - it bans the very democratic freedoms we have fought for and treasure even more in the aftermath of September 11." Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

"Not every book will be right for every reader, but the freedom to choose for ourselves from a full array of possibilities is a hard-won right that we must not take for granted in this country." Judith Platt, director of the Association of American Publishers' Freedom to Read program.

Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2001

Reasons Cited for Challenging Books

Between 1990 and 2000, of the 6,364 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom

• 1,607 were challenges to "sexually explicit" material

• 1,427 to material considered to use "offensive language"

• 1,256 to material considered "unsuited to age group"

• 842 to material with an "occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism"

• 737 to material considered to be "violent"

• 515 to material with a homosexual theme or "promoting homosexuality"

• 419 to material "promoting a religious viewpoint"

Banned Books Week at RBC Library

Check out our displays and pick up a bookmark. Better yet, read a banned or challenged book. See
The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books 1990-2000 or the List of Frequently Challenged Classics.

Banned Books Week is a time to consider our First Amendment Rights. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, in Texas V. Johnson, said, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." Also keep in mind the words of Noam Chomsky, "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

It is due to the efforts of librarians, teachers, parents and students that most challenges are unsuccessful. "Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." Section III of the ALA Library Bill of Rights.

Stephen King's Dead Zone - challenged, removed and banned because of "filthy language"

Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres - banned because "it has no literary value in our community right now."

---

   library@rbc.edu | Last Update: May 11, 2010