Dear O'Abby: Tell me more about book bans

 Dear O'Abby,

I see that it was recently banned book week and I'm a little confused.  My local bookstore had a whole shelf-load of banned books on display, but surely, if they're banned, they shouldn't be available?  And most of the books on that shelf are things I've read!

So what's the deal with banned books?  Can you explain it to me?

Best wishes,

Confused Reader

Dear Confused Reader,

You are correct that last week was Banned Book Week.  Banned books are not necessarily banned everywhere, but have been removed from school and other libraries in certain places.  Running since 1982, the week is designed to highlight titles that have been banned or challenged.

The titles on the list have shifted and changed over the years, especially in recent years where the majority of books on the list are titles that deal with LGBTQIA+ content.  In the past, profanity, sex and drugs were the main reason books were banned or challenged.

Florida seems to be the place where book banning seems to be the most intense at the moment, with titles like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Diary of Anne Frank and books by Judy Blume, Stephen King and many others being removed from libraries.  This has been made possible by a State law that means books have to be immediately removed if anyone suggests they are harmful and the process to get them back on shelves is arduous.  This has made it possible for a small number of parents to have an outsized influence on the books available to readers.  Including making some absolute classic pieces of literature unavailable to readers.

Book bans are incredibly harmful in that limiting access to books narrows the range of voices and experiences readers, and particularly young readers, have access to. For many young people, reading about people whose experiences and feelings match their own can play a huge part in understanding and accepting themselves and finding their place in the world.  

Publishers of these books will fight for them, but with the law in favor of those calling them out as inappropriate, and the measures to get them reinstated being both difficult and expensive, many of these titles will remain off shelves in some school and public libraries into the future.  Which in my opinion, is incredibly wrong.

You can find a list of the top 10 most challenge books of the year here. 

X O'Abby