This week was Banned Books Week. From the I Love Libraries web site,
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this initiative of the American Library Association reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2007, marks BBW's 26th anniversary (September 29 through October 6).
The ALA site has a list of the 100 most frequently banned or challenged books. Check it out and see how many of them you have read. I set a goal to read every book on the list a couple of years ago. An interesting, but not surprising, phenomenon is that some of the books were just not that good from a literary standpoint, but being challenged elevates these books to a different status. In other words, if the challengers would simply ignore them, some books would probably filter down to the lower stacks sooner rather than later.
But the real point is, there are people in every community, including yours, who would suppress public access to reading materials. And that is a scary thought.
Challenging children's materials strikes me as more insidious, because it can be cloaked in "concern" for children's wellbeing. I've taken a lot of online classes for school library media specialist certification (a different process than getting a Master's in Library Science.) I have been shocked and dismayed at the number of fellow students who think that censorship in collection development and at the circulation desk is A-OK. That's one of the reasons I decided to get into a master's program at an ALA accredited school, where intellectual freedom is valued.
What do you think about all of this?
Note: And Tango Makes Three -- a true story, coauthored by respected children's science writer Peter Parnell, about 2 male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to hatch and raise -- was the most frequently challenged book of 2006.
