Banned Books in the Huffington Post

Check out these words of wisdom and opinion from Molly Raphael, current President of the American Library Association.  She brings together serious topics on censorship and the restriction of access to books and looks at the differences and similarities between the two.  Well worth the read and definitely in the spirit of Banned Books Week!

[F]ar more often than we may realize, individuals and groups have sought to restrict access to library books they believed were objectionable on religious, moral, or political grounds, thereby restricting the rights of every reader in their community. For example, this summer the Republic (Mo.) school board voted to remove Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler'sTwenty Boy Summer from the school library as a result of a complaint that the book "teaches principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth." More than 150 students and their families have lost access to those books; while a local and national outcry caused the school board to return the books to the library, the books are now on a locked shelf and unavailable to students absent the consent of a parent or guardian. 

It's become popular in the last few years to argue that this kind of book censorship is no big deal. Isn't the decision to ban the books just a way of helping parents protect their children? What does it matter if a book is banned from a school or library if kids can obtain books from online retailers? 

Such censorship is, in fact, a very big deal. Such censorship matters to those who no longer can exercise the right to choose what they read for themselves. It matters to those in the community that cannot afford books or a computer, and for whom the library is a lifeline to the Internet and the printed word. And it matters to all of us who care about protecting our rights and our freedoms and who believe that no one should be able to forbid others in their community from reading a book because that book doesn't comport with their views, opinions, or morality.

Click here to read the rest of this Huffington Post article.  It's worth taking the time to check out!