Articles

Highlighting the New Hampshire Library Association and the Right to Read by Skyler Boudreau

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Ms. Lauren Rettig and Ms. Julia Lanter, Co-Chairs of the New Hampshire Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. As members of this committee, Ms. Lanter and Ms. Rettig stand as a line of defense for the access of books within the state of New Hampshire. It recently reconvened in May of 2020 when the resurgence of book banning began in earnest.

How Banned Books and The Handmaid’s Tale Can Sustain Us by Sara Bibeau

When The Eye first decided last fall to theme our book discussion around censorship, I asked myself, “Where do book bans fit into this concept?” It does seem obvious that by banning a book, its words and themes are removed from a population’s ability to understand or consider them. But I wondered how people went about making those decisions, to lobby for the removal or banning of books from particular institutions? What would make some groups deem literature worthy of being banned?

At Your Own Peril by Skyler Boudreau

In his preface to the 1891 edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written. That is all.” Despite this defense, Wilde’s book was condemned by the British public as vulgar.