For the past several years, the Ocean Shores Public Library has been an active participant in Banned Books Week, which started Sunday and runs through Saturday this year.

For the 2025 campaign, the Ocean Shores Public Library’s bulletin board features the event’s promotional materials as well as a sampling of covers of books that have been banned at one time or another, for one reason or another. Bookmarks and stickers commemorating Banned Books Week are available for patrons.

Timberland Regional Library’s (TRL) website is emblazoned with a hero image and a link for visitors to check out the Top 10 Banned Books of 2024 as reported by the American Library Association.

“Banned Books Week is when we highlight the importance of intellectual freedom and the right to read freely, values that are central to the library mission,” said Evi Buell, regional manager for west Grays Harbor branches of TRL. “This is when we celebrate how literature can challenge us, sometimes uncomfortably, and challenge authority with perspectives, experiences, and ideas.”

An official Banned Books Week Facebook post reads, “Banned Books Week 2025 kicks off during a tumultuous time for libraries, schools, and bookstores, as censorship attempts remain rampant around the country. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. Join the book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — this week to voice support for the freedom to read!”

Although neighborhood bookshops are not targeted or challenged as often, they are a beacon for readers when looking for reading material, especially books they can’t find elsewhere. Independent booksellers will also special order books just for the asking.

“Harbor Books supports each individual’s right to read. Our store exists to serve our community, and we strive to be accessible to everyone,” said Melinda Einander, proprietor of Harbor Books in Hoquiam. “We are committed to offering books that reflect the diversity of our community and the wider world. Don’t see what you are looking for in our store? Please let us know.”

Stephen King, who happens to be the most banned author in U.S. classrooms, once said that if your school classroom or library has essentially banned a book, “… run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.”

NBC News reported that PEN America’s annual Banned in the USA report “found that 3,752 unique titles were affected by bans in the school year that ended in June. The most banned titles included A Clockwork Orange and Wicked, while the most banned authors included Stephen King, Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult. More than 80% of all bans originated in just three states: Florida, Texas and Tennessee.”

However, public libraries have been assailed with a deluge of book challenges in recent years. According to the ALA and reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, 2,452 unique titles were challenged in 2024, following 4,240 in 2023.

“Nearly 72% of censorship attempts in 2024 were initiated by pressure groups and decision makers who have been swayed by them,” the ALA stated in a report titled Censorship by the Numbers. “The majority of library censorship can be tied to organized campaigns. Pressure groups and the administrators, board members, and elected officials they influenced targeted 4,190 total titles in 2024. From 2001–2020, this constituency attempted to remove an average of 46 titles per year.”

In April, the ALA announced the theme for this year’s Banned Books Week — “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights” in deference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

In an April 16 article published on the Banned Books Week’s official website, Betsy Gomez wrote, “Current efforts to ban books and information held in schools, libraries, archives, and bookstores are a truth close to fiction — namely, the depiction of extreme censorship by an oppressive regime in George Orwell’s cautionary and prescient tale 1984. The Banned Books Week 2025 theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.”

“Banned Books Week prompts us all to stand up and defend our First Amendment right to read freely,” said Barbara Stripling, Banned Books Week Coalition chair. “Censorship is never the path to truth. All of our lives are enriched when our libraries and schools provide the books that allow us to see ourselves, understand others, and discover the world.”

In September, legendary actor and activist George Takei of Star Trek fame was named the Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week 2025.

“Books are an essential foundation of democracy,” Takei said. “Our ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ depends on a public that is informed and empathetic, and books teach us both information and empathy. Yet the right to read is now under attack from school boards and politicians across America. I’m proud to serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, because I remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up. First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me. Now, as an author, I share my own stories so that new generations will be better informed about their history and themselves. Please stand with me in opposing censorship, so that we all can find ourselves — and each other — in books.”

In the early 1990s the Pacific Northwest became ground zero in an effort to ban Alvin Schwartz’s three-book series, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, as detailed in a 2018 documentary titled Scary Stories: The Story of the Books that Frightened a Generation. Select stories were adapted into a film released in 2019.

According to the ALA, the Top 10 most targeted books of 2024 were All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson; Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe; The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison; The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; Tricks by Ellen Hopkins; Looking for Alaska by John Green; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews; Crank by Ellen Hopkins; Sold by Patricia McCormick; and Flamer by Mike Curato.

Visit BannedBooksWeek.org for information about events, ways to participate, and promotional materials. Follow Banned Books Week on social media (@BannedBooksWeek on Bluesky, Facebook, and X, @banned_books_week on Instagram) for the latest updates.