Celebrate Your F-READ-om!

The American Library Association sponsors a Banned Books Week which, in 2022, is celebrated Sept. 18-24. Banned Books Week was initiated in 1982, in response to an increasing attempt to remove books from circulation. During 2020, the Office for Intellectual Freedom noted challenges to reading materials at all levels, including those focused on race and racial justice, as well as others dealing with LGBTQ and transgender issues. Some book clubs (including one at the UWEC McIntyre Library) focus on reading banned or challenged titles. When a school board in Tennessee removed the graphic novel, Maus, from its 8th-grade curriculum, sales of the book skyrocketed. Katherine Elchert, the new library director at McMillan Memorial Library in Wisconsin Rapids (formerly at Rice Lake Public Library), will discuss the issue of what we are allowed/encouraged to read in her talk, "Celebrate Your F-READ-om!" on Thursday, Sept. 22, beginning at 12:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall (R234) on the UWEC-Barron County campus. Her presentation is part of the Thursdays at the U Lecture Series, which is free and open to the public, thanks to financial support from the campus foundation. The campus is located at 1800 College Drive in Rice Lake. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are required for campus guests. For more information, call the campus at 715-788-6244 or email the organizer at tollefla@uwec.edu (mailto:tollefla@uwec.edu).