A painted truck stocked with banned books will visit Philadelphia this fall.<\/p>\n
The Banned Wagon, a mobile library of titles facing bans or challenges in the United States, is gearing up for its annual tour. It will hit the road Oct. 5-11 to coincide with Banned Book Week. The project, now in its third year, aims to raise awareness on censorship and celebrate the “freedom to read.” While the wagon traveled to nine cities in 2024, it’s focusing on just two this time: Philly and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
MORE:\u00a0<\/b>Jersey Shore author explores themes of toxic positivity in ‘Fun at Parties’<\/a><\/p>\n Penguin Random House, which runs the Banned Wagon, said in a release that it chose those destinations because they were “central to American democracy.” At each stop, visitors can browse a selection of 30 books and claim free copies while supplies last. They can also pass a book onto someone else by scanning the QR code on the side of the truck; each scan will trigger a donation to a community in need through First Book. Donors can include a personal note about a banned book they love.<\/p>\n The books in the Banned Wagon collection<\/a> span picture books and novels geared toward adults. Many of the titles have queer, transgender, Black or brown protagonists.\u00a0“Hair Love” by Matthew Cherry, about a Black\u00a0father learning to style his daughter’s hair, is featured in the young readers section. So is “The Rainbow Parade,” a picture book about a family’s first Pride parade by Emily Neilson. According to PEN America<\/a>, 44% of the most commonly banned books during the 2023-2024 school year featured people or characters of color, while 39% featured LGBTQ+ people or characters.<\/p>\n Other highlighted titles include books that have been challenged for decades, including “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros.<\/p>\n People who stop by the Banned Wagon will also have the option to send a note about book bans to their local representatives. EveryLibrary, another partner on the project, is sponsoring that initiative.\u00a0The truck will park at Northeast Regional Library from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10, and Parkway Central Library between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11.<\/p>\n The tour is stopping at libraries to call attention to “escalating political attacks on these vital institutions,” Penguin Random House said. School libraries in particular have become a battleground in recent years. PEN America recorded over 10,000 instances<\/a> of school book bans between 2023 and 2024, the highest figure by far since the organization began tracking this data in 2021. (The tally was 3,362 in the 2022-2023 school year and 2,532 in the 2021-2022 school year.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The issue manifested locally at the Oxford Area School District in Chester County two years ago<\/a>, when the school board voted to override an advisory committee’s recommendation to keep three challenged books accessible in the library. “Lucky” by Alice Sebold and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison were placed in a restricted section, while “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen\u00a0Chbosky was removed from circulation.<\/p>\n Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
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