Banned Books Week

By -

Next week is officially Banned Books Week.  I don't usually post much about it here, because I already have plenty going on at work.  This year I somehow wound up sort of in charge of the event, which is kind of panic-inducing.  Luckily my full-time co-worker is doing the budgeting part and actually knows what she's doing.

I've spent the past few weeks trying to get the event together.  Today we did the decorating and strung yellow 'Caution' tape around the place until the word 'caution' became meaningless to me.  We scattered books wrapped in brown paper around the library--each has a label on it with a title and the reason the book has been challenged or banned.  Since I like history, I have some volumes that say things like "The Bible in English" and so on. 

What the books looked like last year


And our display tables went up with tri-fold boards explaining what the event is all about.  One of the other part-time librarians made a gorgeous board about book burnings.  It's a work of art.  I'll take pictures and post them later.

Last year's display table


I also tried to put together a 'virtual read-out' video with some students.  The video people on campus were very helpful and it's not done yet, but I hope it works....

I love the artwork the ALA put out this year, and we've got the bookmarks and posters, plus some pins we made ourselves.  We coveted the t-shirts, but alas, those were far above our budget.  (But wouldn't it have been cool to order a few for our student helpers to wear during their shifts?)  

All this leaves me little time for actually reading any banned books. Besides, they're all out on the display table, hopefully attracting students' attention.  I've got my eye on a few for afterwards. :)




Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more