Freedom to Read Week runs Feb. 22 to 28
What makes a book “bad”? Why might a book be banned or, historically, burned?
Since the dawn of publishing, the written word has caused quite a stir: words are dangerous; readers, a threat; new ideas could cause uprisings, destabilize the status quo and upset the moral righteousness of the most morally-righteous homes.
Historically, the threat came from Galileo and the knowledge that the world revolved around the sun. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution taught humans about their commonalities with the great apes.
In 18th-century France, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned for blasphemy and pornography, with his novels thrown into a pyre. D.H. Lawrence, the 19th-century British novelist, was charged with obscenity for his depictions of the non-traditional, and subsequently faced bans in all English-speaking countries.
In Berlin, Germany, at a place called Babelplatz, a memorial plaque is inscribed with the following words: “That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.” Beside the plaque, in a hole in the ground, sits the Empty Library—bare shelves with enough space to hold 20,000 books.
On May 10, 1933, members of the Nazi German Student Union shouted: “Against decadence and moral decay! For discipline and decency in the family and the nation! I commit to the flames….” while throwing the works of prominent authors, journalists, philosophers and academics into a giant fire.
A purge happened in Russia as well. In the Soviet era (1922 to 1991), literature came under state control. During the Great Terror of the 1930s, author Mikhail Bulgakov described his life as “too dangerous to live” and, in response to persecution, burned manuscripts and early drafts of such great works as The Master and Margarita, rather than face arrest, hard labour in the gulags, or death.
The censorship of literature is certainly not exclusive to Europe and North America. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books tells the story of an Iranian professor of Western Literature and a group of her students who, defying the dictates of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strict regulations on writing deemed immoral or anti-Islam, meet and discuss prominent works of world literature.
Fast forward to the near present. The dawning of a new era of censorship has emerged significantly in North America and in response to the growing power of Right-wing nationalism and parental-rights movements. The main target: the public school system and publications that tackle themes of race and sexuality, and especially the emerging works of a new generation of LGBTQIA2S+ writers.
However, these are not the only victims of the great new purge. Older classics have again come under fire. In 2022, Penguin Books published, for auction, a fireproof edition of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. The novel itself, with themes of patriarchal oppression and totalitarian rule, has been cited as one of the most-challenged books since its release in 1985.
In 2021,Texas state Republican Matt Krause sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency, with a list of over 800 books (the Krause list). Krause’s objective was to “target material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”
The list includes such titles as The Abortion Debate: Understanding the Issues, and The Legal Atlas of the United States. In 2025, the United States Department of Defence required schools that serve military children to remove from their shelves a list of 596 titles (Saskatchewan author Khodi Dill’s anti-racism book Stay Up: racism, resistance and reclaiming Black freedom was on the list!).
Alberta followed suit. An order was issued in July 2025 to locate sexually-explicit books and remove them from school library shelves. When school divisions returned to the province with a list of 226 titles, many of them classics, Premier Danielle Smith’s words of vicious compliance became a rallying call for the censorship project. The province demanded that schools rewrite the list.
In January 2026, a team of reviewers returned to the province with smaller lists for removal but have refused to identify the titles.
We have also witnessed the harsh punishment of dissent these past years (the recent 20-year sentence of Hong Kong dissent publisher Jimmy Lai is notable). For example, Wyoming library director Terri Lesley was fired in 2023 for refusing to remove books with sexual content and 2SLGBTQIA2S+ themes. In October 2025, Lesley was awarded a $700K settlement for wrongful dismissal.
In some cases, dissidence pays off.
Book bans and challenges have been significant over the centuries: For specific challenges, explore these interactive maps and lists: The Canadian Library Challenges Database from the Centre for Free Expression of the Toronto Metropolitan University, and Banned Books by The BPC MapHub (Book & Periodical Council) of Canada.
Freedom to Read is a project led by Library and Archives Canada. It occurs each February, after a month to honour the act and art of reading itself: I Love to Read Month. From its website, it states: “freedom to read can never be taken for granted … censorship affects the rights of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read.”
The week itself, which runs this year from Feb. 22 to 28, is described as an event that encourages Canadians to “think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom.”
Freedom to read can mean much more than a mere acknowledgement of the ongoing censorship of literature in democratic or otherwise societies. It might mean awareness of the issues of literacy and access to knowledge and literature that still plague our communities.
Freedom to read takes action. Find a way to take meaningful action this Freedom to Read week or all throughout the year. One obvious way is to read, and read challenged literature in order to explore the conflicts yourself.
Online or local community events will be planned for the week. Aside from visiting your local library to look for a “bad” book, The Librarians Film was released on Feb. 9, 2026. Explore the trailer, website, or view the film online. The documentary explores the role librarians are playing in fighting censorship in public collections.
In Whitehorse, the library will host a free talk—In a Democracy, Who Gets to Decide?—with James Turk, founder and director of the Centre for Free Expression, in Toronto.
The Canadian Freedom to Read website, freedomtoread.ca, asks citizens to take action by “being champions for intellectual freedom” and sharing this “united message” on their social-media sites.
They also encourage the promotion of the week in your own way: “share book lists, web links, programs,” join a book club and “stand with libraries across Canada to demonstrate the power and importance of your freedom to read.”
