Penfield Library hosted its annual “Oz Reads Banned Books” event to kick off Banned Books Week, following the rising number of books banned or challenged in various public schools across the country.

“People often don’t realize how relevant book banning is to them, even if it’s not happening in their community,” Nicole Westerdahl, a librarian at Penfield, said.

Westerdahl said that attendees at the event are often surprised to learn that books they read in school are banned in other parts of the U.S.

PEN America, an advocacy group for authors’ free expression, recently reported that over 10,000 books were banned in schools across the 2023-2024 school year. 

More than 8,000 of the books were banned in Florida and Iowa.

The American Library Association (ALA), using different means to track data, found 1,128 books challenged this year so far. The number is down from last year’s report, which found 1,915 titles.

“The world around us is actively trying to suppress writers’ voices,” Quinton Longworth, a student, said.

Moms for Liberty, the group behind many of these bans, has been active in central New York.

South Carolina and Tennessee have also enacted statewide book bans. Utah enacted a law mandating schools pull books from shelves if a minimum of three school districts in the state view the book as objectionable.

While book bans are often pushed to protect children, Westerdahl argued that the bans do the opposite.

“They are really just preventing them from developing the tools to process and respond to what they’re already encountering as part of life,” Westerdahl said. “Sexuality, gender, racism, depression, violence, abuse, death and more.”

Image by John Ramspott via Wikimedia Commons