Ban the Book Banning

Banned Books Week starts today, in what has become an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and many more organizations. The purpose: to promote free and open access to information, even if the unformation and ideas are considered unorthodox or unpopular.

Book banning was in the news just this week with three items: the Republic county school board in Missouri banned two books from the school library, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut's classic tale of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II, and Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler, which tells of a girl trying to recover after the death of her boyfriend (they're now kept in a separate room only parents can check out); the Charlton Public Library in Massachuetts lifted a century-old ban on Eve's Diary, a satirical version of the Adam and Eve story that had nude illustrations (not photos, mind you); and the Algerian International Book Fair banned 400 books.

I saw someone make the argument recently that in this day and age of digital books anyone can download, there really isn't such a thing as truly banned books. But many people still don't have ready access to computers or digital devices, in this country and around the world. And that argument doesn't even take into account the issues of free speech that are involved. I'm reminded of the words from 1776 attributed to founding father Stephen Hopkins, delegate from Rhode Island to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, "I've never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about."

Of course, the ironic thing about book banning is that it tends to bring attention to the very books it wants to make disappear; the Springfield-Greene County Library District (which includes the public library in Republic) has 21 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five and 36 holds, and 11 copies of Twenty Boy Summer and and 37 holds, and the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis is offering a free copy of the author's book to any Republic student who requests it.