Inaugural Banned Books Week Read-Out and ABFFE Auction Meet With Success

As bookstores, libraries, and readers nationwide celebrate the freedom to read this week, more than 40 bookstores have posted readings from banned books on the Banned Books Week channel on YouTube [1], and supporters of free speech are bidding on artwork by children’s book illustrators in the third and final week of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression’s online auction on eBay. [2]

ABFFE [3] launched its three-week online auction [2] on September 9 to help support its vital work defending the free speech rights of young readers. The auction “had a very strong response the first week, and has continued to build since,” said ABFFE President Chris Finan.

“People have been excited about the art, and excited that it’s going toward free speech,” he added. “Everything is working out like we had hoped.” ABFFE has already raised more than $5,000 through the auction, and Finan expects more will be raised before the end of the week.

This year’s inaugural virtual read-out of banned books [4] has been a success, too. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 195 read-out videos posted to the Banned Books Week channel on Youtube [1], 44 of which were created by bookstores. “I think we can be proud,” said Finan. “That’s a really great turnout.”

Blue Willow Bookshop [5] in Houston, Texas, posted a creative video [6] wherein staff member Victoria Rutlage performed a reading from Lois Lowry’s The Giver from a makeshift jail cell. In addition to the video, Blue Willow has featured a banned books display and has been tweeting about Banned Books Week as a way to encourage in-store discussion. “It’s a really great conversation to have with customers,” said owner Valerie Koehler, who has been pointing out banned or challenged books to her customers when she spots someone with such a book in hand. “It’s surprising to me how many people are shocked to hear that these books have been banned or challenged,” said Koehler.

Free speech advocates Kevin Coolidge and Kasey Cox, the owners of From My Shelf Books [7] in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, have been actively promoting Banned Books Week. In addition to having an in-store display and being active on Facebook, Coolidge and Cox are creating a video about an experience they had a few years ago with a police officer who challenged some of the books they sell in the store. After it happened nearly two years ago, Coolidge wrote a column for a local paper about the right to choose what to read, and what to sell in the store. “It was very well received,” said Cox, who plans to read from the column along with Coolidge in their read-out video.

When anyone challenges a book that is for sale in the store, “our standing comeback,” said Cox, “and a way to ease the tension, is just to say we believe you have the right to read it. We don’t necessarily think you should go out and do everything you read about. We have a True Crime section. But that doesn’t mean you should chop grandma up and put her in the freezer. But you can read about it if you want!”

At Anderson’s Bookshops [8] in Naperville, Illinois, an in-store read-out launched the company’s eighth annual Young Adult Literature Conference last weekend. Two hundred and fifty librarians, educators and authors came together to read Ellen Hopkins’ poem, “Manifesto,” and an excerpt from Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War.