Banned Books Week is here! My library is celebrating with our Intellectual Freedom Festival (which, interestingly enough, involves very few books).
The Wall Street Journal is celebrating in its own special way, with an editorial by Mitchell Muncy about why he thinks Banned Books Week is, well, silly. He argues that books don’t really get “banned” in the U.S., they are merely challenged by concerned parents who want to guide their children’s reading tastes in unruly public schools.
But books have been censored by the U.S. government — within the last century, even — and continue to be banned by governments all over the world. By celebrating the freedom to read and calling attention to the fact that books have been and will continue to be challenged and banned, we keep this issue at the forefront of American consciousness and prevent it from happening more often than it does.
I think it’s important for kids to know that they don’t have to accept all the ideas they encounter in books, but they do have to be ready to confront and discuss those ideas because they will inevitably come up at some time during their lives. As ALA President Camilla Alira so succinctly and eloquently put it, “Censorship has no place in a free society. Part of living in a democracy means respecting each other’s differences and the right of all people to choose for themselves what they and their families read.”
Check out these other timely links about Intellectual Freedom in libraries, cribbed from the ALA weekly newsletter:
- Vancouver Public Library cancels Assisted Suicide Workshop
- Author Ellen Hopkins’ visit to Norman Schools in Oklahoma is canceled after a parent questions the content of one of her books
- Citizens for Filtering Shiawassee District Library Public Access Computers Group rallies in Michigan to demand restrictions on Internet access
- An update on Net Neutrality from the head of the FCC
- Videos from the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom, including “My, Those Novels Certainly Are. . . Graphic!” with Neil Gaiman, Terry Moore and Craig Thompson
Rachel
