Typically held during the last week of September, Banned Book Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. This national event is a way to bring the entire book community - librarians, booksellers, teachers, publishers, and readers - together as a way to demonstrate the value of free and open access to information. Banned Book Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship and shines a spotlight on current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.
Banned Book Week began in 1982 after the Supreme Court case of Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) which ruled that school officials cannot ban books in libraries due to their content. Judith Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom (part of the American Library Association), helped create the event as a response to a surge in schools, bookstores, and libraries of challenged books. Banned books were showcased at the 1982 American Booksellers Association BookExpo America trade show in Anaheim, California. At the entrance of the convention was a large cage with roughly 500 books inside that had been challenged or banned with a sign saying that some people considered those books dangerous.
Since then, Banned Book Week has become a national and annual event that encourages people to read, and read whatever they want. Many libraries, schools, and bookstores also use this time as a way to showcase the importance of freedom of speech, celebrate authors, and discuss the difficult topics surrounding why some books have been banned.
