Read banned books: Banned books week at Canisius University

By: Madison Howard, Features Editor

Every year, books across the country are challenged or banned from schools and libraries because of their content. Banned Books Week, held Oct. 4–10 this year, brings attention to those challenges while highlighting the importance of access to books and the freedom to read.

The week is not only about the books that have been removed from shelves. It also creates an opportunity to ask why certain books become controversial, who decides what readers can access and what happens when a story is considered inappropriate for its audience.

At Canisius University, the Andrew L. Bouwhuis Library brought those questions to campus through a week of activities, displays, discussions and a documentary screening.

Banned books are not always the titles readers might expect. Some are books that students may have encountered throughout their own school years. Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novel “Drama”, Jodi Picoult’s “Monday’s Not Coming”, Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak” and Sara Gruen’s “Water for Elephants” have all faced challenges or bans.

The books cover very different subjects, from identity and relationships to difficult experiences and social issues. Seeing familiar titles connected to book bans can make the subject feel less distant. These are not necessarily books that exist somewhere on an unfamiliar list. They can be stories readers remember encountering themselves.

That idea was reflected in the library’s activities throughout the week. Rather than simply displaying a list of banned books, the library gave students different ways to interact with them.

The week began with a more hands–on approach. Students could gather around the library’s activity table and choose from pre–designed bookmarks to color. One design featured the words “Read Banned Books,” connecting the simple craft directly to the purpose of the week.

After coloring their bookmarks, students could have them laminated to keep. There was also a button–making activity where students could choose from the designs available and create a button of their own. The activities kept the atmosphere casual. Students could stop by, make something and continue on with their day, but the subject of banned books remained at the center of the activities.

Most students who stopped by participated in at least one of the activities, making the library’s celebration something students could actively take part in rather than simply observe.

The activities also showed one of the ways the library approached Banned Books Week: making a complicated topic accessible without turning every interaction into a formal discussion.

The library’s “Blind Date with a Banned Book” display took a different approach.

Photos of banned books were displayed around the area while wrapped books sat on a table. The titles and authors were hidden. Instead, each book had a description written by the librarians attached to the outside of its wrapping. Students had to make their decision without knowing exactly what they were choosing.

The setup turned picking out a book into a small mystery. Instead of recognizing a familiar title or judging a book by its cover, students had to rely on a description and decide whether the story sounded interesting enough to take a chance on.

The activity offered a different way of discovering a book. The title, author and cover could not influence the initial decision. The description had to be enough. For an event centered around books that have faced censorship, the activity also encouraged students to interact directly with the books themselves.

The library also hosted a banned book readout during the week, giving members of the Canisius community an opportunity to share passages from books that have been challenged or banned. Rather than discussing censorship only in the abstract, the readout put the actual words from those books at the center of the event. Participants could bring attention to stories that mattered to them and give others the opportunity to hear why those works continue to be read.

The week also included a faculty discussion with Dr. Richard Reitsma, Dr. Jane Fisher and Dr. Janet McNally. The discussion focused on censorship and book banning, bringing the topic into an academic setting and giving students the opportunity to consider the issue through a range of perspectives.

Together, the events showed that Banned Books Week can be approached in several different ways. Students could create something, discover a book, listen to a passage or participate in a larger conversation.

The week concluded with a screening of “The Librarians”, a documentary focused on school districts banning books and the librarians involved in the debates surrounding censorship.

The documentary shifted the focus from the books themselves to the people dealing with book bans firsthand. Librarians are often directly involved when schools or communities debate whether a particular book should remain available, putting them in the middle of larger disagreements about access to information. The documentary also connected the campus conversation to what is happening outside of Canisius. Book bans are not simply a historical issue. Decisions about what books students can access continue to be debated in school districts and communities.

Throughout the week, the library approached Banned Books Week from several different angles. A student could walk in and color a bookmark, make a button, pick a mystery book from the “blind date” display or sit down to watch a documentary about censorship.

Each activity offered a different way to approach the same question: what happens when access to a book is questioned? Banned Books Week is ultimately about more than identifying which books have been banned. It asks readers to consider the stories they have encountered, the perspectives those stories provide and what it means when someone else decides whether those stories should be available.

At Canisius, the week brought that conversation beyond the pages of a book and into the library itself, giving students the chance to read, create, discover and think about the freedom to choose what they read.