Banned Books by Emily Berg

 LUCY BURDETTE: I wanted to do something to mark banned books week, but I was on the road and hard put to come up with something meaningful. Fortunately, our friend Emily Berg, who is the manager of the fabulous Books and Books in Key West, has just the right words. Welcome Emily!

EMILY BERG: One of the great joys of working in an indie bookstore is the freedom to select which books we showcase. Being an independent store means we, the staff, get to decide which books go on the tables.

Most booksellers will agree putting up a new display is one of the most fun parts of working in a bookshop. Curating a themed table of books is a creative endeavor, drawing attention to favorite authors and titles that may otherwise go overlooked. Our Beach Reads table, for example, is an annual favorite with each staff member picking their favorite summer reads. It’s currently Hispanic Heritage month which means we have a table showcasing Hispanic authors.    

There is one display in the store in which we don’t choose the books, and unfortunately, it’s growing: our banned books display. The books on this table end up there largely due to the efforts of pressure groups and in some case government entities. We decided to focus in specifically to books banned or challenged in Florida but that doesn’t really narrow it down. Florida has the most instances of banned books with 2,304 titles in 2024-2025 according to PEN America. 

The number alone is concerning but what does it really mean? The display sparks questions from visitors. Here are the most common. 

Q: “They made me read this in school when I was a kid. How can it be banned?”

A: More titles are banned each year. A book can be banned in one place and required in another. The list is growing exponentially. This means some of the classics that Americans read in school in previous years are no longer available to students.

Q: “Why is this banned?”

A: Whatever the book the answer is nearly always the same: “for no good reason”. It doesn’t take much for a book to be challenged and ultimately banned. Overwhelmingly  books with LGBTQ+ characters, themes of race, and sexual content are the ones targeted for bans.

Q: “If it’s banned how can you sell it?” 

A: Government entities and private organizations don’t have the power to control what a business sells… for now. We’re part of a free market economy which means we get to make decisions on what we buy and sell. Book banning in America mostly effects schools and public libraries. 

Q: “As long as it’s available for purchase is it really a problem? Can’t the student just come buy the book from you if it’s not in their library?”

A: Perhaps some students have the resources to come to a bookstore and pick out whatever they like, but what about those who can’t? School libraries are available to those students who might not have an adult to take them to a bookstore and purchase their books. 

Overhearing that last question is most likely to see me stop what I’m doing and come speak with the asker. I was extremely fortunate as a child to have parents that encouraged reading but the majority of my books came from the school library. Both of my parents worked long hours so a trip to the bookstore was rare. A trip to the school’s media center was not.

The display of banned books is one of the few that stays up year round in this bookstore. While other tables rotate and change this display never goes out of season. Hopefully, someday, it will. 

Reds, let us know about your experience with banned books, or any questions you have for Emily!

Bio: Emily Berg is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound where she studied art with an emphasis on steel sculpture. After graduating in 2007 she moved to Juneau, AK where she worked in the non-profit world for several years before returning to the lower-48 to be closer to family. Originally from Minneapolis she moved to Key West in 2013 from Chicago. She has been the manager of Books & Books at the Studios since 2018. She serves on the board of Directors of the Friends of the Key West Library and Key West Literary Seminar.

Celebrating Banned Books

RHYS: If I asked you what Animal Farm,The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, The Diary of Anne Frank, Farenheit 451, Gone with the Wind and the Catcher in the Rye all have in common I doubt if you could come up with the right answer--unless you look at the heading of today's post.

THEY ARE, OR HAVE BEEN, BANNED BOOKS. Books removed from school or local libraries because someone objected to them. And since Banned Books Week starts next Monday I thought it was time to bring to the attention of the readers of our blog that books are still being banned all around this nation.

I was once told by a librarian that in her school system it just takes two parents to complain for a book to be pulled from the shelves. I have even heard tales of Goldilocks and the Three Bears being banned from a school library--because she wasn't punished for breaking and entering.

The reasons the books cited above were banned range from the obvious: the N word in Huckleberry Finn, even though Mark Twain was most sympathetic to the black cause, to the dubious--Anne Frank mentions menstruation, Harry Potter's wizard behavior is deemed anti-Christian, as is the world of Lord of the Rings. The most ironic, of course is Farenheit 451--a book about banned books, about the destruction of all books because the powers that be fear knowledge in the population. And isn't that exactly what school or library boards demonstrate when they give in to extemism and remove books from their shelves?

I read on another post this week an example of how short sighted some of the school boards are, acting out of fear without doing the research. A book called "Making it with Mary" was pulled from the shelves, when it was actually all about sewing.

In my opinion there is no reason to ban a book. If it is considered too mature for a child, then it is up to the teachers to advise and the parents to intervene. If it portrays things that civilized humans would find objectionable it can surely be seen as a good teaching tool, helping young people to make their own decisions about what is acceptable and what is not. In a world in which no book is as graphic as the material seen every night on TV, removing them from shelves is surely a waste of time.

So let all civilized and intelligent readers keep tabs on their school and library boards and speak up when needed. My new book, Royal Blood, is about vampires. even if they are of the comic variety--does that mean that it is being pulled from library shelves at this minute?