Any district residents feeling as though their freedom to access written words is compromised might want to visit the Kamsack Library between February 21 and 27 which is Freedom to Read Week.
Nicole Larson, the Kamsack librarian, has created a display of books that some groups in some places, even in Canada, have placed onto a list of banned books.
Those lists of banned books contain some books which are now generally considered to be classics of literature, Larson said, listing Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird.
“We encourage everyone to visit the library, look at the display of banned books, read one or more of them to try to determine why they are so offensive as to have been banned by one or another group or organization,” she said. “We’d like to know what they think.”
“Freedom to read can never be taken for granted,” said information on the Freedom to Read Week website. “Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border.
“Schools and libraries are regularly asked to remove books and magazines from their shelves,” the information said. “Free expression on the Internet is under attack. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read.
“Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” it said.
“Canadians have long tried to remove books and magazines that they deem offensive, or inappropriate for certain audiences, from public libraries and schools,” it said. “Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they have failed.”
To mark the 2016 Freedom to Read Week, the organization lists 30 books which have been the target of those wishing to ban books in recent decades. That list includes: Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan, Go Ask Alice by anonymous, A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Such is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
