September 18th-24th 2022
About
“Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” Click here to learn more at the Banned Books Week website.
Learn more about book banning and censorship with Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints
Finally, test your Banned Books knowledge with this trivia:
| Feminist activist Gloria Steinem urged people to boycott this book because of its depiction of violence against women. Years later, her stepson Christian Bale starred in the movie adaptation of the book. | American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) |
| Copies of this 1956 poem, which features the opening line, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” were seized by the US government after being declared obscene. The courts later ruled the work was not obscene. | Howl (Allen Ginsburg) |
| The author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s also penned this 1966 true crime novel, which parents in California unsuccessfully attempted to bar a teacher from assigning in 2012. | In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) |
| Parents attempted to ban this children’s book series from local libraries and schools. Author Barbara Park once said, “The first negative letter was from a grandmother in Minnesota who was annoyed that [the main character] had acted out and that she wasn’t using the Queen’s English.” | Junie B. Jones (Barbra Park) |
| In 1963, phony parents in Columbus, Ohio, tried to have this 1951 book banned from schools for being anti-white and obscene. | Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Sallinger) |
| This book made the American Library Association’s Top 10 challenged books in 2006, 2008, and 2011. But rumor has it, the TV adaptation of this book won 17 Teen Choice awards during its run. | Gossip Girl (Cecily von Ziegesar) |
| This children’s book hopped into the number two spot in the American Library Association’s Top 11 Challenged Books of 2018. The audiobook version features Jim Parsons, Ellie Kemper, John Lithgow, Jack McBrayer, and RuPaul. | A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo (Jill Twiss and EG Keller) |
| Back in the mid-1990s, this children’s book featuring a hard-to-find wandering protagonist was banned in New York and Michigan for an image of a wardrobe malfunction. | Where’s Waldo (AKA Where’s Wally) (Martin Handford) |
| It wasn’t child’s play when this 2014 Caldecott honoree — the first graphic novel to receive the honor — was removed from shelves because some people thought it was sexually explicit | This One Summer (Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki) |
| This book, authored by John Green and featuring our 49th state, was banned in Kentucky in 2016. | Looking For Alaska (John Green) |