“Beloved reading advocate, writer, and television and film star LeVar Burton will lead this year’s Banned Books Week, which takes place October 1–7, 2023. Burton is the first actor to serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, an annual weeklong event that highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.
As we’ve seen throughout National Library Week, as long as there are libraries, Americans’ right to read will not be overcome by censorship,” says Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada. “Our 2023 Banned Books Week theme – ‘Let Freedom Read’ – captures what’s at stake for our democracy: that the safety of our right to speak and think freely is directly in proportion to our right to read. ALA encourages libraries in every context to mark Banned Books Week by inviting other groups within their communities to celebrate and take action to protect our freedom to read all year long.
Let Freedom Read.”
Carolyn’s note: I’ve read a lot of books which were probably banned, starting off with the Peyton Place series when I was in high school. Recently I heard that even “To Kill a Mockingbird” was on that banned list, due to its racial theme of a white attorney representing a Black defendant.
And of course I’ve read “The Catcher in the Rye”, “Fahrenheit 451”, “The Handmaid’s Tale” — all banned books somewhere, sometime. And all excellent reads.
Was at Bookman‘s at Wilmot yesterday, and there was a poster that said “I’m With the Banned.“ And the Harry Potter books were on there. Wow, even magic was banned by some.
Sad. The GOP is afraid of books.
To be fair, they aren’t afraid of the Bible…or at least, their interpretation of it.
They just want to ignore the parts they don’t like (such as the “do unto others…” part).
Of course, they may simply be afraid that others will do unto them the way that they do unto others.