It's September already, which means that Banned Books Week is making its triumphant return for 2014 from 21-27 September. The American Library Association partners with a whole slew of organizations to celebrate the many amazing books that have been banned or challenged. You might think that censoring and banning books doesn't happen anymore. You'd be sadly wrong. It happens more often than you might care to think. The big story that's blown up recently is that a pastor in Texas wants his local library to pull at least 75 titles dealing with the occult to protect young readers from dangerous influences. The threatening titles include Twilight, which is only threatening if you consider rewriting vampires to sparkle in the sun a threat.
But there's more. I follow a lot of different book and literary news sites and have been consistently disheartened by all the school districts pulling books from summer reading programs. Any school or library that actually cares about the freedom to read and preventing censorship has rules in place to evaluate what books are appropriate for what age group. The throughline in all the stories this summer is the school refusing to follow its own policies. Principals, superintendents, and school boards have pulled books without proper review based on one parental complaint.
The worst by far is the terrible choices made by the Cape Henlopen school board in Delaware. First, they pulled Emily M Danforth's novel The Miseducation of Cameron Hill from the optional (!) summer reading list because of profanity. The school board was bombarded with criticism for its decision and made an even worse one: they voted to eliminate the summer reading program entirely rather than address why one book with profanity was viewed as worse than other books with profanity still on the list.
It was largely assumed that the LGBT themes of Danforth's novel were the real reason behind the decision, so writers, educators, and organizations like the ALA and Freedom to Read Foundation sent letters addressing the double standard behind removing this title. The school board decided to call their bluff and pull all the books because each and every title had profanity in it.
Censorship of literature is bad. Banned Books Week is a way to raise awareness about censorship in the modern world and the multitude of wonderful books challenged for ridiculous reasons. Even the US Supreme Court had a say in banning books less than a hundred years ago, preventing the sale of James Joyce's Ulysses because of obscenity laws.
The CBLDF has a wonderful guide you can download about censorship in comics. The ALA has a whole website dedicated to Banned Books Week.
How will you be celebrating? I'll be doing another week of Virtual Read-Outs, and I think my focus is going to be books challenged this summer by high schools. Seems topical.