The Banned Book Club reads and discusses books of all ages and genres.RIVER JOHN – Books are more than collections of words. They are time machines, conduits for information, mirrors of society, forms of entertainment and drivers of change – sometimes they can be most of those things simultaneously. They should also be available to anyone who wants to read them; that’s the mindset behind the Banned Books Club at the River John branch of the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library.
The monthly club held its first meeting in the late spring as an antidote to the intolerance, negativity, bitterness, and hate that’s rife in the world. The idea of reading and discussing banned books, which are also known as challenged books in Canada, is something van der Veen has been mindful of for a while.When the club started, she wasn’t entirely sure what the reception would be.
This is Banned Books Week in the U.S. and Freedom to Read Week takes place in February in Canada. Calls to ban books is a hot button issue in the United States, van der Veen said, and it seems to garner media attention that far outstrips its roots. Even Sheree Fitch’s children’s picture book Sleeping Dragons All Around has been targeted. In 2014 a patron of a library in Saskatchewan complained about the book, according to Franklin’s Challenged Books and Magazines. “The patron said the book perpetuated negative stereotypes of the Chinese people, language and culture. Reducing a people to a funny character amounted to tokenism and was unacceptable.” It said in the listing.