Banned Books Week is Coming!

This year, Banned Books Week will be celebrated from September 21st to October 1st.  As the event draws nearer, we'll be posting more and more information to this page about what we'll be doing to celebrate your First Amendment rights.  Take the banned books quiz to see how prepared you are to celebrate!

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library to Offer Free Copies of Slaughterhouse Five to Students in School Where Book Was Banned

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis announced today that it will offer one free copy of Slaughterhouse Five to up to 150 students at a high school in Republic, Missouri. Last week, the school board of Republic voted 4-0 to eliminate Slaughterhouse Five and Sarah Ockler’s Twenty Boy Summer from its curriculum and from the school library as the books were deemed “inappropriate” by the school board, based on a complaint from one parent.

“It’s not clear to me whether any of the adults making these important decisions in our public schools have actually read these books,” said Julia Whitehead, Executive Director of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis. “All of these students will be eligible to vote, and some may be protecting our country through military service in the next year or two. It is shocking and unfortunate that those young adults and citizens would not be considered mature enough to handle the important topics raised by Kurt Vonnegut, a decorated war veteran. Everyone can learn something from his book.”

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library has received many offers of support for dealing with the book-banning situation. The fledgling nonprofit, which opened in January, 2011, in a space donated by Katz & Korin, P.C., is working with the ACLU in Missouri and Indiana to support the First Amendment rights for the students at Republic High School. The offer of a free book to students requesting a copy is another gesture from the organization to help protect these rights.

According to Whitehead, Vonnegut may have responded best to this sort of book banning when he said: "All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values...and I say let's get back to the gool old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old fashioned Constitution of the United States—and to hell with the censors!  Give me knowledge or give me death!"