This year, we celebrate Banned Books Week from September 27-October 4. I announced this to the faculty a couple of weeks ago and someone said, "Do they still ban books?" Sadly yes, now more than ever, though her optimism touched me. Each year a top 10 list of the most-challenged books is compiled. In 2007 alone, more than 400 books were subject to some form of challenge or censorship in our nation's libraries.It is both inspiring and terrifying that people give this much accord to books. As much as people ignore and demean literature these days, they certainly give it a lot of attention when it says things with which they do not agree. In books are contained ideas and when ideas themselves are suppressed, oppression is the rule of the day. First you can't read that, then you can't say that, then you can't think that . . . where does it stop?
In a school library this is a particularly ponderous situation for the librarian, at least on the surface: it's my job to choose books and materials from the hundreds of offerings out there, and I have to decide what's suitable or not based on audience, budget, relevance, and other factors. What might be appropriate for one child may not be appropriate for another, but that's really up to that particular child's parents, at least while he's a minor. Taking a book out of the library at one individual's suggestion makes it impossible for anyone else to access it, and this means that one person's voice speaks for all of us. And that's pretty much what censorship is, one of the ugliest things on earth. Want to know more about your rights? Try the American Library Association.
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