Banned Book Week Resources

BANNED BOOK WEEK is October 4 to 10 so I wanted to post some relevant resources here:

From the ALA: https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

From School Library Journal: https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/story/ALA-Releases-150-Most-Challenged-Books-from-1990-2025

Banned books week.org: https://bannedbooksweek.org/  and suggested their action steps: https://bannedbooksweek.org/let-freedom-read-day/

Banned Book List – compiled by PEN America: “The 52 Most Banned Books in US Schools” covers 2021 through 2025: https://pen.org/top-52-banned-books-since-2021/    

ALL of these are on the Dan Patrick/Texas list (no longer accessible unless you look at Recover America’s list of “harmful” books which is linked in this PEN America article about book bans in Texas: https://pen.org/were-coming-for-the-books-texas/

BANNED BOOK WEEK is certainly about censorship, but it should also prompt us to think about literacy and the ties to democracy (see recent “buzz” around The New Dark Ages by James Marriott). Molly Guptill Manning has written several texts about WWII era soldiers and literacy. I have read and enjoyed When Books Went to War and I am hoping to read her The War of Words, about soldiers writing about their experiences.  Her most recent non-fiction work is titled A Librarian’s War and was reviewed positively in the Wall Street Journal. Some of the statistics that she uncovers are shocking, especially in contrast to the efforts today to repress reports and journalism from the troops or about their experiences. Back to banned books … consider the list of titles removed from the Naval Academy in April 2025.