Come see our Banned Books Week exhibit while it’s still up this week! Directly to your left as you walk in the main entrance of the library, our exhibit invites you to learn about books that have been banned in the U.S.

This week McCain Library joins libraries across the U.S. (at least those not afraid to invite a book challenge) in celebrating Banned Books Week. We remind the campus to be thankful for our freedom to read and hope you will visit the lobby display of Banned Books from our library holdings. Many thanks to our student worker and librarian-in-training Caroline Borden ’09 who pulled together the display and its accompanying handout. Of course, there is a Facebook page about Banned Books Week: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Banned-Books-Week/20181651661.

Observed during the last week of September each year since 1982, this annual American Library Association event prompts us not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. While it is often children’s and young adult titles that face formal challenges in school media centers and public libraries, books that people tried to remove from library circulation have included these classics:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Forever by Judy Blume

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

Native Son by Richard Wright

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

For a list of  books targeted since 2000, see

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlists/TOP_100_in_2000_2007.pdf.