The Brooklyn Public Library Offers Each Teenager within the U.S. Free Entry to Censored Books

We now have coated it earlier than: college districts throughout america are increasingly censoring books that don’t align with conservative, white-washed visions of the world. Artwork Spiegelman’s Maus, The Illustrated Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walker’s The Shade Purple, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird–these are a few of the many books getting pulled from library cabinets in American faculties. In response to this concerning trend, the Brooklyn Public Library has made a daring transfer: For a restricted time, the library will offer a free eCard to any individual aged 13 to 21 throughout america, permitting them free entry to 500,000 digital books, together with many censored books. The Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, Nick Higgins said:

A public library represents all of us in a pluralistic society we exist with different individuals, with different concepts, different viewpoints and views and that’s what makes a wholesome democracy — not shutting down entry to these factors of view or silencing voices that we don’t agree with, however increasing entry to these voices and having conversations and concepts that we agree with and concepts that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

That is an mental freedom to learn initiative by the Brooklyn Public Library. You recognize, we’ve been being attentive to plenty of the guide challenges and bans which were going down, notably during the last 12 months in lots of locations throughout the nation. We don’t essentially expertise an entire lot of that right here in Brooklyn, however we all know that there are library patrons and library workers who’re dealing with these and we needed to determine a method to step in and assist, notably for younger people who find themselves seeing, some books of their library collections which will characterize them, however they’re being taken off the cabinets.

As for tips on how to get the Brooklyn Public Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned web site provides the next directions: “people ages 13-21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, offering entry to our full eBook assortment in addition to our studying databases. To use, electronic mail bo***********@bk**********.org.” In brief, ship them an electronic mail.

You could find a listing of America’s most steadily banned books at the website of the American Library Association.

Word: We first posted about this initiative through the canine days of final August. However it appeared price mentioning this program whereas college’s in full swing. Therefore why we’re flagging Books Unbanned once more.

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