Macdonald-Kelce Library Blog

Banned Book Week 2022 (September 18-24): To Kill a Mockingbird Book Spotlight

Image from bannedbooksweek.org

As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray: “The books the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

When a book is frequently challenged, asking why it is challenged can be illuminating. What is it about the book that people wish to censure? What are the reasons given for a book being challenged?

Libraries collect books for their entire community. When librarians are pressured to remove books from their collection, they’re faced with the question of how to respond. The first step is building awareness for what books are targeted and how often libraries are pressured from removing them from their collections.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has been documenting challenges to books since 1990 and has compiled a list of the Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books of the Past Decade.

In recognition of Banned Books Week 2022 (September 18 – 24), the Macdonald-Kelce library will be highlighting some of the most frequently challenged books from the list compiled by the American Library Association’s OIF. To start with, we will be highlighting the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

To Kill a Mockingbird is often challenged due to its offensive language and depiction of racism.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Call Number: PS3562.E353 T6 2010

ISBN: 9781455538966

Publication Date: 2015-12-15

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.