US banned book week 2009

America is currently observing its annual Banned Book Week. As organiser, the ALA has lots of well organised information and links on its website (including the titbit that Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls was declared non-mailable by the U.S. Post Office in 1940). The week allows people the opportunity to reflect on their current freedoms, especially the freedom of expression. I think everybody should do this and feel a little upset that the UK doesn’t have a similar occasion.

While looking through the ALA site I discovered that fighting censorship is part of the US Library Bill of Rights. Two of the six articles in the Bill are directed toward ensuring freedom from censorship:

III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfilment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas

Kudos to that.

So I checked out the “10 most frequently challenged books of 2008”. Top of the list (consecutively since 2006) is And Tango Makes Three, a cute looking book about gay penguins. According to the BBC this is based on a true story. Number 2 is the His Dark Materials Trilogy, and the only entry on the list that I’ve actually read.