Celebrate Banned Books Week with the Brooks Library!

The organization kicks off the week with live performances, hands-on arts activities, a book give-away, early literacy testing and a banned book character costume contest.

The James V. Brown Library is participating in Banned Book Week this year by highlighting some of the most frequently challenged books in our collection. But still we can manage to be surprised- both by the ways in which some schools and administrators will bend the rules to placate book banners, but also by the creative and determined activism to defend the freedom to read.

Interested in reading a challenged or banned book?

Participants will read passages from books that have been banned or challenged in public, school or academic libraries during an event at next week at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Young Adult books will be the focus of Banned Books Week this year. These are the books that give young readers the ability to safely explore the sometimes scary real world. Six YA titles were on the list of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2014, according to the American Library Association. “It’s hard to believe this type of censorship is still happening today”. “(Restrictions) are a threat to freedom of speech and choice”, Johnson-Spence said. Numerous books which have been banned or challenged are beloved classics. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.

As part of Banned Books Week (27 September – 3 October), Sage Publications and Index on Censorship are collaborating for a one-hour webinar about protecting and promoting the freedom to read. This year’s observance commemorates the most basic freedom in a democratic society -“the freedom to read freely”, and encourages not to take this freedom for granted.