Books On The Chopping Block
City Lit' Theater’s “Books on the Chopping Block” 2024 actors. Photo by Friends of the Edgewater Library.
Friends of the Edgewater Library and the Edgewater Branch Library sponsored “Books on the Chopping Block,” on Sept. 22, 2024. The program with City Lit Theatre’s actors was a performance of dramatic readings of excerpts taken from the American Library Association’s top 10 most frequently challenged books in the U.S.
Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2023
The program kicked off Banned Books Week, which was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. By focusing on efforts to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.
The annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.
To learn more about efforts to ban books, Friends of the Edgewater Library created a list of resources that are available from the Chicago Public Library.
Book challenges in 2023
The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented book challenges throughout the United States, finding that challenges of unique titles surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA.
OIF documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023. Read more.
The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over, and that we must all stand together to preserve our right to choose what we read. Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced.
… 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 (emphasis ours)
— Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom
If you haven’t read a banned book recently, take a look at some of this year’s and previous years’ Top Tens on the ALA website. Read a few and let us know your thoughts in the comments of this post.
If you want to get more active with your reading and listen to some current discussions, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Banned Book Club podcast might be for you. Listen or connect to his podcast on the service of your choice, connect via social media, or watch on MSNBC.