Locals Prepare for Banned Book Week
by Jacob Mathias City-Times Senior Reporter
This week marks the 30th annual Banned Books Week by the American Library Association. Banned Books Week celebrates any literature that has been challenged or banned now or in the past.
The reasons for banning books are many, as is the list of books itself.
Reasons ranging from antichristian themes, profanity, sex or violence have been employed for banning and challenging books from “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” by Judy Blume and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee to the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins with thousands in between.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Library is celebrating banned books with a large display banner and book table encouraging people to read them. Books on display at UWSP include “Catch-22,” “Catcher in the Rye” and “Lord of the Flies.”
“The slogan this year is ‘I read banned books,’” said Andy Pech, UWSP circulation librarian. “It’s one thing to be against banning books, but it doesn’t really do you any good if you don’t read them.”
The purpose of Banned Books Week is to celebrate the overcoming of challenges to ban or censor literature.
“We don’t force anybody to read any books. We just keep them here,” said Pech. “If you want to read them you can come and read them. If you don’t want to read them you have to have to…We neither bolster our opinions on anybody nor deny them.”
Pech said he had a community patron try to ban a book in his library about 10 years ago. The book was a romance novel called “Naughty Naughty” and along with the suggestive title, a semi-nude man was pictured on the cover which the patron felt was unacceptable to have on the shelf.
“Several librarians read it. It was determined that it actually wasn’t offensive at all. It actually turned out to be kind of an overblown reaction,” said Pech.
“The book actually had no profanity or even racy scenes in it.”