Mickey hosts the special annual Banned Books Week program. This year we celebrate being "Freed Between the Lines.” 

In her best-selling novel Speak, young adult author Laurie Halse Anderson wrote, “Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” Since the American Library Association (ALA) and Association of American Publishers helped launch Banned Books Week (BBW) 42 years ago on the heels of the Supreme Court Pico case, that dysfunctional family of censorship has unfortunately grown significantly. Across the United States, the past several years has brought a staggering increase in book challenges, bans, and other attacks on the right to read and academic freedom, but there are many signs of hope which BBW celebrates.

On today’s program we welcome the new president of ALA, Cindy Hohl. We discuss the latest report just released from ALA on the state of the right to read with some hopeful notes. Then we’re joined by BBW Youth Honorary Chair Julia Garnett about how young people are on the front lines of censorship battles in schools and they are fighting back and winning, as we hear from the interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, attorney Jeff Trexler, about a history of attacks on comics and other literature, and we’ll learn of some recent legal victories, but also of challenges to come. Project Censored has been a proud supporter and part of the Banned Books Week Coalition for more than a decade.

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