Banned Books Week

I've missed the official start of Banned Books Week (Sept. 29th) due to my trip, but it's never too late to get a librarian fired up about defending the first amendment and intellectual freedom. So I urge everyone to come in and check out the banned books display in the lobby of the library. All of the books on display have been challenged or banned somewhere in the United States, and the poor little ones with black armbands have actually been burned
(we used the American Libraries Association website - http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm - and UC San Diego - http://sshl.ucsd.edu/banned/books.html - as our reference list).
Some of the books may seem like familiar 'dangerous' titles: Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Harry Potter. But some of the books that have been challenged may leave you scratching your head as to the reasoning behind the uproar. My personal favorite: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which was removed from school library shelves in Anchorage in 1976 due to objectionable language.
When you browse through our collection of subversive material, if you see anything you would like to take home and sift through in a dark room with the curtains pulled, feel free to bring it up to the desk and check it out. They are all helpfully enclosed in plain brown wrappers, so your neighbors don't have to know that you are pushing the envelope by reading John Steinbeck or even - gasp! - Dr. Seuss.