Banned Books Week 2022 Starts Today, and It’s More Important Than Ever
Celebrate the freedom to read
Today marks the start of Banned Books Week in the United States, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. The fact that such a week is even necessary in a democracy speaks volumes by itself, but it is as crucial now as it has ever been. According to the official Banned Books Week website, the event was initially begun in 1982 after a “surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.” If you been paying any attention at all over the past few years, you know that the problem has only gotten worse, not better.
It shouldn’t be news in 2022 that banning books is a bad thing. There once was a group of thugs in Europe that liked to burn books that “offended” them, and we ultimately fought an entire world war to stop them, because when you’re the kind of person who burns books, you’re the kind of person who never stops there.
What we’ve learned recently, though, is that burning isn’t necessary if you have state legislatures and school boards that will just remove the books. They claim this is for the good of the children, and certainly there are age-appropriate issues to consider in some cases. But we should also never forget Ray Bradbury’s warning: you don’t have to burn books to destroy a…
