Image from freedomtoread.ca

By Chris Brown

Library encouraging picking up challenged, banned books during Freedom to Read Week

Feb 22, 2022 | 5:16 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – An increase in the U.S. of book challenges and bannings puts even more importance than usual on this year’s Freedom to Read Week, says the Medicine Hat Public Library’s head of marketing services.

Gillian Reimer says the week, from Feb. 20-26, is a way for libraries and the general public to reaffirm the right to intellectual freedom under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A Texas lawmaker has recently begun targetting 850 books that he believes could make students feel uncomfortable, while a Tennessee school district has banned the graphic novel “Maus” for the same reason, claiming inappropriate language and nudity.

The book depicts Nazis as cats and Jewish people as mice. The nudity in the book features a mouse.

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“They said that it made students feel uncomfortable. I don’t know how you talk about the Holocaust and how you teach anything about the Holocaust if you’re not making people uncomfortable,” Reimer says. “It is uncomfortable to hear about because it was so horrific, the atrocities faced by Jewish people.”

“Obviously we think that’s no reason to ban a book because it’s an important topic and if you do so it will lead to more Holocaust-denying and if we don’t learn from history aren’t we just doomed to repeat it?”

Reimer encourages Hatters to pick up books that have been challenged or banned.

“A lot of them include things about gender identity or sexuality or race, the LGBTQ community, books written by that community often get targeted. Even sometimes things like reproduction and sexual health and things like that are challenged.”

The library has a Freedom to Read display and a link online to a list of works that have been challenged in Canada.