“Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.” —Article 3, Library Bill of Rights

Did you know there are hundreds of attempts to remove books from libraries and classrooms every year? Last year, 4,240 unique book titles were targeted for censorship, 65% more than in 2022. That’s the most the American Library Association has ever documented in more than 20 years. Most of the challenged books were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color. Please join us in celebrating this year’s Banned Books Week (September 22-28) and our freedom to read. You can learn more with our Banned Books library guide. Here are some of the titles on the American Library Association’s lists of Frequently Challenged Books that you’ll find in our collection:

• The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• 1984, by George Orwell
• The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
• The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
• Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
• The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
• And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Exercise your First Amendment rights by reading these books!