River City Fiction

From BoingBoing

I apologize for the delay, but I want to remind everyone that if you want to see Twin Hickory’s display of “LIVE humans” reading banned books, today’s your last chance.  It comes down tomorrow.

Adrienne Minock, Teen Librarian at Twin Hickory Public Library, was good enough to email me the following about the Banned Books Reading Room.  I hope to see you all there next year; I’m definitely volunteering.

From Adrienne Minock

“We wanted to put together something that would get patrons to stop and think about censorship, while also conveying our support for intellectual freedom. We came up with the idea of an interactive display that would feature ‘live humans’ reading banned books (gasp!). They don’t need to read out loud, but just be seen reading. The best spot in our library happened to be the glassed-in display window under the main stairs. So we made a ‘live’ display, or tableaux. We recruited volunteers to read in the display. A few adults, as well as some parents with their children, volunteered — but the majority of our readers have been teens.

“The display has generated a lot of comments from our patrons, nearly all of them positive. We hear a lot of ‘Mom, what are those people doing in there?’ We’ve seen many small faces pressed against the glass, gazing in with astonishment at our readers and then asking how they can get in too. We’ve had readers ranging from very young (3 years old) to quite a bit older (we did not ask). We’ve had kids so excited about reading in the Banned Book Room that they actually jump up and down and beg their parents to read with them in the room. And I’ve actually witnessed a teen bargaining chores with his parents in order to be allowed to read in the ‘room’ – how cool is that?!?!  The best part has been hearing parents explain to their kids what the display is all about, which is exactly what we wanted to happen!”