Call for Entries: Get Caught Reading . . . a Banned Book! Send pics!

Dear, sweet readers, do you know what this week is? It’s Banned Books Week, brought to you by the American Library Association. It’s that time once a year when we celebrate the freedom to read what we want by flaunting all the books that people at one time or another, for one reason or another, didn’t want somebody to read. Look! Reading! Danger! Danger! That’s why we love the First Amendment. And we love it when judges defend the First Amendment.

To celebrate Banned Books Week, I thought I’d get all audience-participation-y and ask for your help. As you may be aware (the campaign’s working on me, at least) the Association of American Publishers has a campaign called “Get Caught Reading,” in which they use images of famous people reading books. You know, sort of like “bookworm paparazzi” shots.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get caught reading a banned or “challenged” book and send me photodocumentation of said act. Send your digital image to: uncpressblog [at] unc [dot] edu. I’ll be putting together a gallery of the photos I receive, and I’ll post them at the end of the week. I’ve already snapped pics of some coworkers with their noses in some forbidden print.

How do you know if a book has been banned or challenged? Use the interwebs; there are lots of lists out there. Here’s one. Here’s another. Oh, look, here’s more.

If you want to do something more to bring attention to Banned Books Week, the ALA has tons of ideas!

Get reading, get snapping!

–Ellen

p.s. If you catch a “celebrity” (however you may define the term) reading a banned book, you get 700 BILLION points!!!