The Lamson Library and Learning Commons invites the campus community to recognize the “freedom to read” during Banned Books 2008. According to the American Library Association, these ten books top the list in 2007, but thousands of other books are also challenged in school, public, and other libraries.

Books are challenged from all directions; the Left, the Right, and in-between. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Little House on the Prairie was challenged at a school in Louisiana because it was “offensive to Indians.”; Jon Stewart’s America (The Book) was banned by a regional library board in Mississippi because the book contained images of Supreme Court justices’ faces superimposed on naked bodies; The Guinness Book of World Records was challenged, but retained, in a Wisconsin school for being “sexually explicit.”; and children’s picture book author Rosemary Wells’ Shy Charles was challenged in Oregon because the mother was “portrayed too negatively.”

These books, and other lesser known challenged or banned material, are on display on the Main Level of the library near the Reference/Research Desk.