Banned Book Week Sept. 24-30

[Tanuki]

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/node/12963
....."According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) – which tracks reports of book challenges and bans and compiles an annual Top Ten Challenged Books List – there was an alarming 17% increase in book censorship complaints in 2016. Since most challenges are not reported, the actual number is probably much higher. Even more disturbing, while only 10% of the titles reported to OIF are normally removed from the institutions receiving the challenges, half of the most frequently challenged books were actually banned last year.
.......

BBWC Chair Charles Brownstein says, “Our free society depends on the right to access, evaluate, and voice a wide range of ideas. Book bans chill that right, and increase division in the communities where they occur. This Banned Books Week, we’re asking people of all political persuasions to come together and celebrate Our Right to Read.”

The BBWC will invite communities to talk through their differences by engaging with the books some might try to ban, and in coming together to discuss why a certain book may be troubling to some, perhaps we can learn more about one another and forge common bonds within our communities.
.......
The Banned Books Week Coalition is an alliance of organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Coalition seeks to engage various communities and inspire participation in Banned Books Week through education, advocacy, and the creation of programming about the problem of book censorship. 

Sponsors include: American Booksellers Association; American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; American Association of University Presses;Authors Guild; Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Dramatists Legal Defense Fund; Freedom to Read Foundation; Index on Censorship; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; PEN America; People for the American Way Foundation; and Project Censored.  It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.".....(more)

 
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Here is an online guide for hosting a Banned Book Week event at your school, library, bookstore, etc. :
http://cbldf.org/2017/08/now-available-cbldf-banned-books-week-handbook-2017/

[Hortensis]

1. "Bans of The Handmaid's Tale aren't really just about sex or profanity"

Thanks for this post, Tanuki. When I hear about this at all, it's typically after.

Handmaid's Tale struck me as timely, as it did Newsweek writing on this last April.

"Atwood’s novel was ranked at number 37 on the American Library Association’s 1990-1999 list of the 100 most frequently challenged books." ... “Often what we’ve seen at the Office for Intellectual Freedom is that the complaint is that this is bad language, but [in] The Handmaid’s Tale the language is not nearly as bad as we find in many other novels” that aren’t frequently challenged, LaRue says. “So there’s something else that’s going on there. And I think that the surges that happen of complaints at these schools are really around discomfort with message,” he adds. “People don’t want to see message so they complain about something else. They say well this is about sex. Well no it’s about more than sex, it’s about the harvesting of women’s bodies.”

http://www.newsweek.com/challenges-and-bans-handmaids-tale-arent-really-just-about-sex-or-profanity-591907

And a few other little issues, like depictions of religion and authoritarian government...

[Tanuki]

2. My local library will be showing the Bette Davis film Storm Center,

among other activities.

https://library.nashville.org/event/banned-books-week

"Celebrate your freedom to read with a screening of Storm Center. Bette Davis plays a librarian who takes a stand. Things get hot in a small town when the library refuses to censor communist books. (Rating: Approved. 85 min. 1956.)

Before the film, NPL librarians will share their favorite banned or challenged books."

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At the link, there is also a list of 2016's most frequently targeted books.