'Quiet protest:' South Boston event celebrates banned books

SOUTH BOSTON, Va. (WSET) — A local library is hosting an event honoring banned books.

Halifax County-South Boston Public Library says it is hosting a "Banned Book Read-In" at the South Boston Public Library.

The event encourages residents to "come in and enjoy a banned book from either our collection, or one of the ones we are giving away for free."

"Free books, free food, and a quiet protest all in one? Who could resist," the library wrote in a Facebook post.

Last fall, the Pittsylvania County Public Library (PCPL) system put up a display featuring banned and challenged books -- a subject that has been quite controversial lately.

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At the time, the PCPL said it supported the American Library Association's (ALA) Freedom to Read policy, which reads, in part:

"The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label "controversial" views, to distribute lists of "objectionable" books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read."

RELATED: Book bans, attempted bans, and threats against librarians soared in 2021: Study

Accounts of book bannings and attempted book bannings, along with threats against librarians, have soared over the past year and the ALA has included some numbers in its annual State of America's Libraries Report, released Monday. The association found 729 challenges — affecting nearly 1,600 books — at public schools and libraries in 2021, more than double 2020's figures and the highest since the ALA began compiling challenges more than 20 years ago.