If you happen to visit the library during the last week in September, you will notice something very remarkable. No, it won’t be the fact that people are reading, browsing the collections, or checking out books. Rather, you will notice that one of our book displays is adorned with strips of yellow barricade police tape which says something to the effect of “police line, do not cross.” The reason for this remarkable adornment is to call attention to the actual books on display. The Harry Potter series, Of Mice and Men, The Giver, The Catcher in the Rye, The Lord of the Flies and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are just a few that you’ll find there. These represent just a fraction of the books whose content has been formally challenged by special interest groups who deem the content unacceptable for public consumption and therefore think that such material should be banned.
In setting up this display during the last week of every September, a period referred to in the library world as “Banned Books Week,” we join a host of libraries throughout the country to raise awareness about the constant challenges to intellectual freedom. The celebrated children’s author, Judy Blume, says it best when she writes about the adverse consequences of such challenges: “[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” So, join the rest of the country in celebrating intellectual freedom by reading a “banned” book.
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