Banned Books Week is here! It starts this Sunday, September 24, and runs through Saturday, September 30, and CBLDF is delighted to help you prepare with the latest edition of the CBLDF Banned Books Week Handbook and more! Keep reading for resources, events, and more!

If you are hosting an event or Banned Books Week display, let us know about it! Register your event with Banned Books Week at http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/events and send an email to betsy.gomez@cbldf.org!

CBLDF Banned Books Week Handbook

Comics are the most banned books in the U.S., and CBLDF’s handy visual guide helps you protect them! Discover the books facing censorship. Creators talk censorship, including Neil Gaiman, Raina Telgemeier, G. Willow Wilson, and more. Explore our practical ideas for hosting Banned Books Week events in your store, school, or library! Featuring a cover by Jillian Tamaki, the artist of This One Summer, the most challenged book in 2016! The handbook can be viewed and downloaded below. Bundles of the printed handbook are also available in the Rewards Zone, and you still have time to get them before Banned Books Week is over!

Download a PDF here.

Resources

As you’re planning your events or developing your library and classroom curricula, be sure to check out these other valuable CBLDF resources:

Prepare for your events with great merchandise from the CBLDF Rewards Zone:

The Banned Books Week website also has resources, as does fellow sponsor, the American Library Association. Among ALA’s downloads is a fortune teller featuring artwork from This One Summer! Check out ALA’s downloads here.

Events

Events throughout the week will celebrate our right to read. Here are just a few that focus on comics. For more events, visit the Banned Books Week website here.

Sunday, September 24 – Sunday, October 1

Celebrate Banned Books Week – Read a “Banned” Graphic Novel!

Online • True Believers Graphic Novel Book Club

Exercise your First Amendment rights (while you still can)! In conjunction with Banned Books Week, the True Believers Graphic Novel Book Club is conducting a virtual “read-in” September 24th through September 30th and all members are encouraged to celebrate the freedom to read by reading a “banned” graphic novel during Banned Books Week! Find out more here.

Monday, September 25

PEN Out Loud: I Write Banned Books

Strand Bookstore • New York, NY • 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Censorship is happening today and it is infringing on the right of readers.

In celebration and defiance during Banned Books Week 2017, PEN America in partnership with Strand Books invites authors — whose books have been banned or challenged because of their cover art and content — to discuss their experiences, and how to get skeptical readers to live up to the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

The discussion will feature David Levithan, author of Two Boys Kissing, which was challenged in part because of the cover photograph of two boys kissing, Coe Booth, whose honest portrayals of inner city life have met with challenges across the country, and Ariel Schrag, whose comics anthology Stuck in the Middle has received multiple challenges due to “explicit language and content.” The panel will be moderated by Jason Low! More info here.

Saturday, September 30

Words Have Power! Banned Books Buffet at East

Milwaukee Public Library • Milwaukee, WI • 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.

Celebrate Banned Books Week with a Buffet of Banned Books! Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read and recognition of the importance of the First Amendment. The buffet will include samplings from the most challenged books across the country. Celebrate your right to read at East Branch library, and make a few banned book buttons! More info here.

Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret

Queensbury Theatre • Houston, TX • 7:00 p.m.

Presented by the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, in conjunction with Queensbury and the Tribble School of the Performing Arts, Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret is a celebration of songs and scenes from shows that have been censored or challenged on America’s stages. Banned Together features a libretto written by John Weidman, directed by John Feltch, and featuring performed selections from Chicago; Rent; Fun Home; Angels in America; Almost Maine and many other challenged works. Banned Togerther is presented as a part of Banned Book Week, the annual celebration of the freedom to read. Admission is free. RSVP here.

—

CBLDF’s education program is made possible with the support of the Gaiman Foundation and CBLDF’s Corporate Members — ABRAMS, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, BOOM! Studios, comiXology, DCBS, Diamond Comic Distributors, Dark Horse Comics, DC Entertainment, Fakku, IDW Publishing, Image Comics, Half Price Books, Oni Press, Penguin Random House, ReedPop, TFAW.com, Scholastic, SPX, Valiant, the Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation — and members like you. Thank you!

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, National Association of College Stores, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Council of Teachers of English, PEN American Center, People for the American Way Foundation, and Project Censored.

Help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work by visiting the Rewards Zone, making a donation, or becoming a member of CBLDF!