Well, that’s an easy question to answer. Of course, we don’t want books banned! Banned Books Week ended on Sept. 23, but here in the LVA library we’ll keep the books on display for a few weeks more.

The importance of Banned Books Week is to bring attention to books that some people have deemed inappropriate, and looking at the image below, you can see the different ways that books have been tagged as such.

The bottom line is that there is some aspect of a book that Person D doesn’t like, and that dislike is so strong that they want the book unavailable to everybody. Before you start pointing a finger, there are those at both ends of the political spectrum who have challenged books and wanted them pulled from the public square. Regardless of how open-minded one believes himself or herself to be, there is an idea out there that will cause offense. The challenge here is how we deal with the offense.

To decide that no one should have access to an idea is where book banning takes flight. This is misguided as prohibiting a thought doesn’t stop the thought from flourishing. If I tell you under no circumstance should you think of an elephant, I have not stopped you from thinking of an elephant. As a matter of fact, you will now be thinking of an elephant when you otherwise would not have. Nor will banning an idea stop others from coming to a similar conclusion. After all, if there are “no new ideas under the sun,” banning an idea is a fool’s errand.

There is certainly an argument to be made, that there are some books that are not appropriate for a school library, but that isn’t the same as saying a book that might be inappropriate for some freshmen shouldn’t be made available for any senior. These are the kinds of decisions that should come from within a family and not from strangers in the community.

I know of no one, let me italicize and bold it, no one who is so wise to be the arbiter of knowledge and wisdom for the rest of humanity. I’m certainly not. But I do take seriously, the responsibility of building a wide and vast collection of resources for our students with a variety of points of view. The library is a place for all, so it is frightening when some person wants to decide who is worthy of representation and who isn’t or what perspectives are worthy of spreading and what ideas must be squashed. There are many instances in history where tragedy began with the burning of books.

So, come to the library, check out a dangerous book, and be challenged. If the book offends you, don’t burn it; bring it back and check out something else. Oh, I should add that none of the books that are a part of our display are banned here at LVA and are available for check out all year long.

For more information about Book Banning go to the Gale In Context databases High School or Opposing Viewpoints on the General Reference page of the Online Stacks.