For a commemoration aimed at promoting aesthetic tolerance, Banned Books Week actually tries to bully parents and teachers who disagree on age-appropriateness for sexually-related or violence-inclusive material, say critics of the sponsoring American Librarian Association.
"Every year, the ALA attempts to intimidate and silence any parent, teacher, or librarian who questions (age-appropriateness) for school children," says Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery to Conservative News Service. "The ALA reduces the issue of censorship to nonsense."
This year's Banned Books Week theme is "Free People Read Freely," but Minnery says a school administrator moving a certain book from a junior high school to a high school curriculum because of, for example, sexual material, "that is a sinister incident of 'censorship'. How ridiculous."
The ALA Web site says Banned Books Week's message is how important it is to keep available "those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints" to anyone who wants to read them.
