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Bookmans would like to encourage everyone to burn their books* as long as they can contain the fire. Maybe a few flags could be burned along the way as well. It's a free speech country and Bookmans stands firm for the free marketplace of ideas.

We are dedicating the entire month of September to the right to express ideas as well as the right to be exposed to those ideas. To that end, along side our regularly scheduled events, we've added events to get your dander up about attempts to supress your rights. Might we recommend Bookmans and Apollo 12 take on censorship through improv, Sept. 17 at Bookmans in Mesa? Alternatively, get geared up and wear your statement on censorship.

* Actually, Bookmans doesn't endorse burning books of any sort, but we do recommend knowing your rights.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

When looking at banned book lists over time, and ALA's list of most challenged books for 2009 in particular, one characteristic that most of them share is that they target young people as readers. Sometimes the books are straight up for children and sometimes they are coming of age stories. Efforts to pull books come from both the Right and the Left, both concerned about the values conveyed in the text.

 

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Many school districts have review boards to watch over what students are reading, and sometimes entire courses of study are marginalized (as Ethnic Studies was here in Arizona), however by a slim margin the Supreme Court determined that implicit in the freedom to express ideas is the freedom to receive ideas and so teachers and librarians can make books, even challenged ones, available to students.