Banned Books Week 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. The event is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the American Library Association. According to the American Library Association, there were 326 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2011. The 10 most challenged titles of 2011 were:

1. ttyl, ttfn, i8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collings
4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hellestad Butler
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Throughout the week the St. Thomas’ libraries will observe Banned Books Week with displays in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library and the Charles J. Keffer Library on the Minneapols campus, free bookmarks and an informative Banned Books website that includes a survey to vote for readers’ favorite banned or challenged book and a daily online banned book trivia contest.