Orcas Library, students explore banned books

||| FROM ANGIE REED for ORCAS ISLAND LIBRARY |||

The Orcas Island Library was fortunate to receive a grant from Brooklyn’s Books Unbanned group this spring, and we’ve been thrilled to put it to work with our local teens.

With the grant, we’ve now run two teen cohorts exploring censorship, challenged books, and the role young people can play in the conversation. Our first cohort of three teens planned three of our monthly Teen Book Boxes, each featuring a challenged title: Ellen Hopkins’ Tricks and Crank, and Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants. Teens can sign up to receive our monthly Book Box at orcaslibrary.org/teen-reads.

Our second cohort, made up of five teens, has created a display for Banned Books Week, which will be on view at the library October 4–10. We hope you’ll stop by and take a look at what they’ve put together!

We are wildly proud of the teens we’ve gotten to know through these opportunities. They’ve shared thoughtful and valuable insights into censorship and the issues facing today’s teenagers, and they’ve contributed meaningfully to a much larger national conversation. Their ideas have been shared with Books Unbanned alongside contributions from teens across the country—from New York and California to Texas and beyond.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to give our local teens a space to be heard, and we hope you’ll stop by the library and see what they’ve created.