While Halloween decorations go up of spooky skeletons and evil ghosts, there is nothing scarier to a librarian than banned books.

There are two weeks in October dedicated to raising awareness about censorship and book banning in the United States. Banned Books Week (October 5th – 11th) has been organized since 1982 in support of free speech and the right to information access. More recently, advocates also began organizing Prison Banned Books Week (October 19th – 25th) to shed light on censorship in prisons. Keep reading to learn more fun (scary) facts about the current state of book bans, and to learn what banned books you can pick up at Cannell Library.  

Banned Books Week: October 5th – 11th 

Did you know?  

• Attempts at book bans are increasing! The American Library Association (ALA) tracked challenges to 2,452 unique titles in 2024. The average yearly number from 2001 – 2020 was just… 273 titles! 

• Book challenges are increasingly coming from organized pressure groups and decision-makers like elected officials or administrators. In 2024, 72% of book challenges came from these types of groups – up from 14% in 2015! 

• These stats are from the ALA’s annual report on book banning, which you can access here: Censorship by the Numbers 

Find Banned Books in Cannell:  

Check out our physical library display in the middle of the first floor, and take home a banned book of your own! Titles include:  

Prison Banned Books Week 

Did you know?  

• Prisons are the largest book censors in the country, but it varies widely by state. In 2022, Florida banned over 20,000 titles while Rhode Island banned only 68. Read more statistics about prison book bans nation-wide in this Guardian article: Link to article. 

• Washington State doesn’t maintain a set list of banned books, but each book is reviewed individually with lots of room for discretion.  When Clark served students at the Larch Correctional Facility, our librarians had to navigate book challenges and censorship. 

Find Books Banned in Prisons at Cannell:  

Find a display of books banned in prisons, as well as books by incarcerated authors, on the first floor of Cannell Library. Here’s just two titles that our librarians weren’t allowed to bring into a Washington State Prison:  

And here’s a few titles by incarcerated authors that you can also find at Cannell: