Banned Books Week Ends At Riverside County Libraries: Let Freedom Read

TEMECULA, CA —Saturday is the final day of Banned Book Week (October 1-7) at libraries across the country in Riverside County and beyond. Inside your local library branch this week, there likely has been a small display of 13 titles— all sharing one characteristic. They are the books that are the most challenged for censorship, according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Over the years, books have been challenged by one or more people as inappropriate for any audience. The most challenged books in the United States, according to resources across the web, include award-winning titles such as "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee, "The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood, "1984," by George Orwell, "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison, "The Color Purple," by Alice Walker, "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," By Mark Twain.

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read, according to a report from the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom's Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone. She reports that library censorship demands are at an all-time high.

"A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library's collection so that no one else can read it," she said. "Overwhelmingly, we're seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand the removal of a long list of books they share on social media. The aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation's conversations, such as people of the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color."

As is typical for the ALA, the association called attention to the top 13 banned books from the previous year:

Local libraries will share information about the challenged titles if you step inside, and a note: you will not find these books in the children's section of the library, as they are written for teens and adults. They run the gamut from gender and inclusion to romance and fantasy. Each book shares a common denominator: at least one person complained about their presence on the shelves in 2022.

This week, two Temecula libraries - the Ron Roberts Branch and Grace Mellman Branch - both held displays of banned books. At Murrieta's public library, Banned Books Week passed by without fanfare. However, the library remains an inclusive space for all, according to the branch manager Melvin Racelis. Also, the majority of the banned books on the top 13 list were available for request at their branch, he told Patch. Neither the Banning Library District or Beaumont Library posted about Banned Books Week on their social media pages in 2023. In Riverside County, Palm Desert Library was among the few branches that shared social posts about Banned Books Week to their readers.

The project began in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries.

In 2023, the number of banned book requests neared 4,000 demands to censor library books and resources across the country. This is the highest number of attempted book bans in the 20 years that the ALA began tracking book censorship requests, that association has said. By comparison, in 2022, the ALA documented 1,269

The ALA's director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom reflected on the importance of shining a light on the books that have been banned.

"When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book," Caldwell-Stone said. "We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read!"