Challenging Reading

What books are in your Top Ten?  If your list includes “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” or John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” you may be surprised to learn that these titles are also on the list of books challenged, restricted, removed or banned in schools and libraries in 2015-2016, according to the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom.  You will find these and many others this week in our display in observance of Banned Books Week 2016.  Each year, along with the ALA, the Association of American Publishers, American Booksellers for Free Expression, the National Council of Teachers of English and other organizations, we use this occasion to celebrate the right to explore ideas and to express ourselves freely without censorship.

Since the first Banned Books Week event in 1982, many thousands of titles have been challenged, including those by 21 Nobel laureates and winners of nearly every literary prize.  They include children’s picture books and beginning readers; young adult titles; classic as well as contemporary adult fiction; science, memoir and other non-fiction; graphic novels and poetry. Stop by this week, pick up a displayed book and stand up for your right to read.