Dear Commons Community,

I was reminded of this by one of my former students, Carla Espana.

Today kicks off  Banned Book Week, an annual observation started more than 40 years ago in response to a sudden surge in the number of book challenges in libraries, schools, and bookstores.  

George Orwell’s cautionary tale ‘1984’ warns us about the dangers of censorship. This year’s Banned Books Week theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.

For ways to get involved, censorship data, events throughout the week, and to help spread the word, visit https://www.ala.org/bbooks.

Banning books is a way for authoritarian governments to control people’s minds.

Tony

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.