Read-outs Mark 21st
Banned Books Week Celebration

Libraries nationwide marked the 21st anniversary of Banned Books Week, “Let Freedom Ring: Read a Banned Book,” September 21–28, with continuous reading of banned and challenged books, displays, and other events. Some commemorations included:

• Authors Studs Terkel and Sara Paretsky led a group of local celebrities who read from their favorite banned books at a September 24 outdoor event sponsored by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom in Chicago.
• A copy of an American Civil Liberties Union poster depicting censored materials was raffled off September 21 at the ACLU’s annual reception in Jackson, Mississippi. The poster, rejected this month for display at the Eudora Welty branch of the Jackson/Hinds Library System, depicts images of a Playboy magazine cover and a comical drawing of Chicago’s late Mayor Harold Washington clad in women’s underwear.
• The Robert R. Muntz library at the University of Texas/Tyler presented movies based on banned literature at an event sponsored by 13 Ways, the school’s Literary Appreciation Club.
• Shelbyville (Ind.) High School librarian Janelle Hart placed stickers on the spines of banned books on the library shelves to help generate a discussion with students about the “reasoning” behind censorship, according to the September 25 Shelbyville News.
• The Albany (N.Y.) Public Library hosted a speaker on the USA Patriot Act.

Banned Books Week is sponsored each year by ALA, the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers, and the National Association of College Stores, and is endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.

Posted September 30, 2002.