Speaking Volumes: Here’s how to celebrate Banned Books Week at your Manatee County Library

Banned books silence stories. Banned Books Week is Sept. 23-29, an annual celebration of the freedom to read.

Founded in 1982 by activist Judith Krug, Banned Books Week brings attention to banned and challenged books. Libraries all over the world, including your local Manatee County library, support intellectual freedom and oppose censorship.

According to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, 56 percent of all book challenges happen in the public library, and books aren’t the only items threatened with censorship.

Programs, displays, databases, films, magazines and more were challenged in 2017. Books are challenged or “banned” for numerous reasons, including but not limited to sex, racial issues, violence, religion, politics, the presence of magic or witchcraft, or age “inappropriateness.”

Many books that have been censored were later dropped from the banned lists and are no longer considered controversial.

Some examples of frequently challenged or banned books in the United States include:

• “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
  
  
• J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”
  
  
• Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
  
  
• John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”
  
  
• The “Harry Potter” series by J.K. Rowling,
  
  
• Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”
  
  
• “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss.
  
  

These titles are all available to check out from the Manatee County Library System.

Banned Books Week encourages readers to revisit these books, gaining a fresh perspective on the controversies the books faced at the time they were banned.

The American Library Association compiled a list of the top 10 challenged books of 2017. All are books for young adults or children, with the exception of “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, and the classic “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee.

The young adult books on the list:

• “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher
  
  
• Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”
  
  
• Alex Gino’s “George”
  
  
• Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give”
  
  
• Raina Telgemeier’s “Drama”
  
  

The remaining three titles on the list are children’s picture books:

• “Sex is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg
  
  
• “I Am Jazz” by Jazz Jennings
  
  
• “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.
  
  

The Manatee County Library’s Books On Tap book club, which takes place monthly at 3 Keys Brewery, discussed one of these young adult books at their Sept. 5 meeting — Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give.”

For more information about Books On Tap, email librarian Kim Barbour at Kimberly.barbour@mymanatee.org.

Want to find out why these books were banned or challenged? Read more on the ALA’s website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/NLW-Top10

Interested in checking out some banned books? Search by title or author at http://manatee.polarislibrary.com/

Kaitlin Crockett is a youth librarian at the Palmetto Library. Speaking Volumes, written by Manatee County Public Library System staff members, is published each Sunday in the Bradenton Herald.