Banned Books Read-Out, October 6

An annual event at the Albany Public Library, co-sponsored with New York Civil Liberties Union, Capital Region Chapter. John Cirrin, the Public Information Officer for the Library introduced Joanna Palladino who put the event together & was the M.C., with some opening remarks by Melanie Trimble, the NYCLU-CRC Executive Director. As usual, readers from the community picked their favorite of books that have been banned/challenged over the years. Many of these were books for children & young adults.

The readers & their books this year were Mary Ellen O'Connor read from Scary Stories, Jack Fallon from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Laura Murray from Forever (Judy Blume gets banned a lot), A.C. Everson from To Kill a Mockingbird, Ryan Faas from Fallen Angels (about Viet Nam, from young adults), Janet Womachka read the entire And Tango Makes Three (& solved one of my Xmas gift problems), Dan Wilcox (that's a me) from Poems from Guantanomo, Jeremy Ward from Lolita, Bob Resnick from The Higher Power of Lucky, and Kris Anderson from Howl (yeah!).

And Mother Judge brought it all back home with some songs.

Another reason why we need our libraries.