Banned Books Week comes at tense time for nation’s libraries and schools

Banned Books Week, an annual event first established in 1982, has arrived amid a tumultuous time for reading in America as both schools and libraries try to fend off rising campaigns to remove titles from shelves. 

Numbers released by free speech group PEN America show a 33 percent spike in attempted book bans in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the one prior. 

The debate over what books should be allowed in classrooms is growing louder and louder, permeating forums from local school board meetings to Senate hearings.

“I think [Banned Books Week] is especially important right now, given the intensity of the banning of books all across the United States. This is a relatively recent phenomenon that is continuing to pick up steam because of political or politicized attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Shaun Harper, professor of education and business at the University of Southern California.

Banned Books Week was started by First Amendment and library activist Judith Krug with the help of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of American Publishers.

More than 40 years later, its message is more relevant than ever with the theme of the week titled “Let Freedom Read.” 

“This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Banning books has become a top issue around the country, with many Republican states making it easier for parents to challenge what’s available on school shelves while Democratic states try to do the opposite. 

But it’s not just schools facing challenges. Data released by the ALA shows that last year, only 16 percent of book challenges were in public libraries, but in the first eight months of 2023, that number has jumped up to almost 50 percent. 

“Expanding beyond their well-organized attempts to sanitize school libraries, groups with a political agenda have turned their crusade to public libraries, the very embodiment of the First Amendment in our society. This places politics over the well-being and education of young people and everyone’s right to access and use the public library,” Caldwell-Stone said. 

Harper said the bans have “become a political talking point by presidential candidates” during the current 2024 GOP primary, making “this year’s Banned Books Week especially timely, especially intense, and, I would argue, especially consequential for our democracy.”

Republicans have gone after books that they feel are inappropriate for classroom settings. Last month, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature,” conservatives read multiple sex scenes into the congressional record in an attempt to make their point that the titles in question are unfit for children.

Advocates, however, argue conservatives are disingenuously saying the only books that have been banned are pornographic material. 

Ailen Arreaza, executive director of Parents Together, a nonprofit that works to deliver news relevant to families, says they have found that schools and teachers are in fact providing age-appropriate books that align with their curriculum for students.

“I think that if a parent is concerned about a book in a library, for example, and they don’t want their child to take it out, that the child doesn’t have to take it out. That’s a decision that parents can make and families can make individually,” said Arreaza.

While some Republicans say they disagree with the decision to ban certain books, they believe it should be a local issue free of federal interference.

“In Burbank, California, some school district banned ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ I don’t agree with that, but that was your right to make that decision,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at the September hearing.

A poll released Monday from Ipsos and We Believe shows 78 percent of Americans are less likely to support a candidate in 2024 who favors book bans. 

There is a marked partisan divide, however, on laws that would prohibit book banning. While 64 percent of Democrats would support such a law, only 46 percent of Republicans feel the same, according to the survey.

Republicans and Democrats in the poll line up more closely in how book bans should be decided. Ninety-six percent of Democrats and 87 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement that teachers, school board members, parents, students and experts should be consulted when deciding to ban a book.

Only 2 percent of Democrats and 11 percent of Republicans agree with the idea that books should be removed on the basis of a single parent’s objection, the survey found.

“We know that most parents, most Americans don’t support book bans, that this is not a thing that matters to them. And it is something that is being used as a political pawn and a way to distract parents,” Arreaza said. 

This Banned Books Week, the Writers Guild Initiative, PEN America and Unite Against Book Bans are teaming up for a day of action Saturday. 

They say actors, writers and artists will band together to help spread the word about banned books through efforts such as a social media campaign that day. The groups want people to share videos on social media with their favorite book that has been banned and use the hashtags #LetFreedomRead and #BannedBooksWeek.

They also created a list of five ways individuals can fight against book bans, such as voting locally, speaking out, signing an open letter to lawmakers, supporting organizations fighting the bans and buying a banned book.

“My expectation is that over the next 13 and a half months at this point, basically up until the 2024 election, this is going to continue to be a problem. My sense is that and my hope is that it will it will die down after the election,” Harper said.