From Huckleberry Finn to Harry Potter. From The Great Gatsby to The Giving Tree. For all our talk of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, America has a long and troubling history of banning books … in schools, in libraries, even across entire cities. 

In response, Banned Books Week was inaugurated in 1982 to celebrate the freedom to read. The Library marks this year’s observance, from September 27 to October 3, with a special online discussion featuring two of its longest-serving and most informed champions of reading, Director of Youth & Family Engagement Crystal Faris and Director of Readers’ Services Kaite Stover. 

They join Steven Woolfolk, the Library’s director of programming and marketing, in examining a range of books that have been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools, from classics such as The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple to childhood favorites including A Wrinkle in Time and Where the Wild Things Are.