Banned Books Week is the national book community's annual celebration of the freedom to read.
The 2025 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from October 5-11.
Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores, and libraries.
In 2024, the American Library Association documented, "2,452 unique titles were challenged, the third highest number ever documented by ALA and significantly exceeding the annual average of 273 unique titles over the period from 2001–2020".
According to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, "a challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or a group. A banning is the removal of those materials."
The ALA notes that "challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others."
Censorship
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Books under Fire: a hit list of banned and challenged children's books
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120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature
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Click on the image above for more stats from the American Library Association
Click on the image below to find titles in the MJC Library catalog:
Banned in the U. S. A
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Books under Fire: a hit list of banned and challenged children's books
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Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds
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Use these library databases to explore topics on banned books and censorship.
From off campus you'll need to log in using your MJC ID # without the W and your six-digit birthdate.
Why search here? Use this database for preliminary reading as you start your research. You'll learn about your topic by reading authoritative topic overviews on a wide variety of subjects.
What's included: Gale eBooks is comprised of subject, specialized encyclopedias with articles written by scholars and experts.
Why search here? When you want to find broad coverage on almost any topic you need to research at MJC, use Gale databases to search over 35 databases simultaneously.
What's included: Gale databases include articles previously published in journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and other media outlets.
Why search here? Search 29 databases at the same time that cover almost any topic you need to research at MJC. This is a good resource to use when you want to delve deeper into your subject.
What's included: EBSCO databases include articles previously published in academic journals, magazines, newspapers, books, and other media outlets.
