Introducing the ‘Banned Book of the Week’
Our award-winning Banned Book Club will continue to highlight brilliant and beautiful works being taken off library shelves
Last July, DPLA launched the Banned Book Club to ensure that all readers have access to the books they want to read. The Banned Book Club allows readers in communities directly affected by book bans to access books that have been removed from library shelves for free via the Palace e-reader app (which you can download here!).
At the PLA 2024 Conference in Columbus, Ohio, last month, DPLA convened leaders and representatives of libraries that are pushing back against book bans for a panel entitled, “Unbannable: How Libraries Are Ensuring Access to Banned Books.” You can read about the session here.
We recently welcomed 17 new locations across 11 states (Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin) to the Banned Book Club, along with adding more than 400 newly banned titles to our collection. Indeed, these are inglorious updates. We were dismayed that the rate of book banning is not slowing down; rather, it is accelerating, with even more books removed from library shelves across the country in the past three months than in the prior quarter.
We at DPLA are so grateful to the dedicated librarians who serve on our Curation Corps team and assist DPLA with a wide variety of curatorial duties. We would particularly like to thank and congratulate Jill Egan, a school librarian and member of the DPLA Curation Corps, who has taken on the role of lead curator for the Banned Book Club. We are indebted to her and so appreciate her hard work to keep the Banned Book Club up-to-date.
In reviewing the newly banned books, Jill observed, “The books on this list have informed, enriched and affected the minds of countless readers. As a school librarian, it concerns me greatly that young people might be denied appropriate opportunities for that experience. I was also surprised to see that many of the recent additions are titles that have been in collections for decades, by canonical authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce, William Faulkner and others. Providing digital access to these classics is necessary to preserve our cultural history.”
Some of the classic titles we were dismayed to see banned in the past few months include:
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- A Good Man is Hard to Find And Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor
Miriam Tuliao, who is also a member and co-leader of the DPLA Curation Corps, has also been helping Jill with this work and she added “Ensuring access to these titles gives full meaning to the freedom to read and promotes discovery, learning, and connection.”
Based on our analysis of data provided by PEN America, the Top Ten most frequently banned books in the United States are:
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto by George M. Johnson
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
- Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
- Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
As ever, we are grateful to Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson, and to PEN America and Everylibrary. Dr. Magnusson’s work tracking book bans makes the Banned Book Club possible.
“At DPLA, our mission is to ensure access to knowledge for all and we believe in the power of technology to further that access,” notes John S. Bracken, DPLA’s executive director. “Today book bans are one of the greatest threats to our freedom, and we have created the Banned Book Club to leverage the dual powers of libraries and digital technology to ensure that every American can access the books they want to read.”
Accolades for Action
Recently, DPLA and our Banned Book Club partners at FCB Chicago have been recognized for our efforts to put banned books back on library shelves (virtually, of course) by garnering high honors from both the Clio Awards and The One Club for Creativity. Our launch campaign was recognized as a Clio Gold Winner for Creative Use of Data and took home a dozen awards at The One Show this month, including the first-ever Best of Non-Profit award and the Fusion Pencil. The awards we received, and the warm reactions from the audience of designers and advertisers to remarks by John Bracken and the amazing FCB team, including Michele Morales and Andrés Ordóñez, have been a manifest appreciation for the work that librarians are doing across the country everyday to ensure access to information to all.
The Banned Book of the Week Campaign
Amid both expanding censorship and energizing celebrations, DPLA is excited to announce our new #BannedBookClub social media series, which will launch next week, with new posts coming out every Wednesday on DPLA’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter feeds. Jill, Miriam and other members of our Curation Corps will select the featured titles. We hope you’ll like and share the posts, and add your own favorites to the threads.
Banning books is a threat, not only to our collective knowledge, curiosity and intellectual growth as a society, but to the very concepts of free speech and democracy. DPLA will continue to tirelessly and unapologetically expand access to banned books, ensuring that we all maintain our freedom to read.
For more information about The Banned Book Club, visit TheBannedBookClub.info.