Library Celebrates Open Access to Books

Libraries across America this week are observing Banned Book Week, in which the free and open access to information is celebrated. The Calabasas City Library is no exception.

The library currently has a display of some of the books that have been challenged or banned as recently as this year. It also has information about banned books available at the front desk.

Though people sometimes think of book banning as a thing of the past, books are still challenged in libraries, schools and other institutions across the country. The primary objections to the challenged books, according to the American Library Association (ALA), are that they contain sex, profanity and racism. It’s these types of objections that put classics many would consider part of the literary canon on modern day lists of books that have recently been removed from library shelves or classrooms.

Specifically, appearing on the ALA’s top 10 banned or challenged book list for 2012 are Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—for insensitivity, nudity, racism, religious viewpoints and being sexually explicit—and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird—for its offensive language and racism (nevermind that Lee used the book to expose racism and, one might go so far as to say, even ridicule racists).

Other books making the top ten list include the New York Times best selling trilogy The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because it was seen by some as being anti-ethnic, anti-family, insensitive, violent, having offensive language and having satanic or occult themes.

Karilyn Steward, a librarian at the city library, said banned or challenged books haven’t been an issue here, though. In the years since the city library’s been open, not one book has been challenged.

“Our patrons understand the library is for everyone,” she said. “We are a public library and have to buy for everyone. If someone doesn’t care for a book, they put it down and move on.”

She said in selecting which books to include in the library’s inventory, the librarians rely on professional reviews. It’s a good way, Steward said, to keep their own opinions out of the buying process. She said they’re also likely to include top sellers—so you can find The Hunger Games or even last year’s racy 50 Shades of Gray on the library’s shelves.

The library will also consider purchasing a book if they’ve had three specific requests for it.

Of all the books that have appeared on the banned or challenged list over the years, Steward’s favorites are those in the Harry Potter series, which were challenged because they contained witchcraft.

The notion might sound silly to some, but books are challenged for even less.

Steward points to a children’s book called The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby by George Beard and Harold Hutchins, which the mother of an elementary school student had banned at the school because it contained the phrase “poo poo head.”

Another, And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, is based on a true story about two penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who took care of an egg until it hatched. The problem? The penguins in the book—as in real life—were both male. The book not only made the ALA’s top ten list from 2006 to 2010, but was number one, except for in 2009, when it took the number two spot.

“Instead of looking at it as a story of loving parents, people had a problem with it being two males, which isn’t even a big part of the story,” Steward explained.

Both books are available at the library.

The Calabasas Library’s display of banned books will remain up through the weekend and into next week.