Banned Books Week leads on to a book banning!

What irony!

For the week of and the week following Banned Books Week my library was bedecked with bulletin boards and displays to raise student and faculty awareness of the implications for freedom of thought through the banning books.  Various groups from grade 6 to grade 12 came in to discuss the reasons why certain books have been banned in the past and why people still try to prevent books from being published, or placed in public and school libraries, and classrooms.

Students were fascinated by one of our displays, where a number of books covered in brown paper had the reason why the book had been banned written on the front of the paper cover.   They were particularly interested in the book which was banned because it had 173 swear words in it.  Who would have bothered to count them, one student asked.   A rather enthusiastic grade 6 student, on hearing about Salman Rushdie and the threats against his life, decided that she would read  his book out loud from cover to cover.  She had just started when the bell rang!

Our English department joined in with a simulated banning of their own.  They gathered all the grade 9s together and told them that they would have to hand in their copies of To Kill A Mockingbird, as it had been banned by the management committee of the school.  They even penned a supposed letter from the committee and read it to the students.  Though some caught on to what was going on since they had seen the displays in the library, there was a very lively discussion about book banning and why some might think that To Kill a Mockingbird might not be appropriate for them.

At the end of 10 days, I really felt that we had had our most successful event ever in the library.  Then I received an email.  One of our administrators wanted a graphic novel, Auschwitz, removed from the library because it was thought to be inappropriate for grade 6s and 7s.  Because the library is for students in grades 6 to 12 and I do not have a restricted section, it would have to go.  I wonder if the irony of the situation was ever recognized!

What will be the final outcome?  I will keep you posted.  However, I often wear Unshelved's Intellectual Freedom Fighter T-shirt to work so...