Maine Library Fights Book-Banning Trend by Seeking Out Controversial Titles
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.The library has also purchased copies of a more recent 2005 picture book And Tango Makes Three, which tells the story of two male penguins that raise a chick together.
The book is based off true events that took place in New York City's Central Park Zoo, but according to the American Library Association, has become one of the most banned books in the country due to its same-sex theme."We are buying banned books in order to publicly push back against the impetus to ban books.
To say, 'If you don't want it in your library, we want it in ours,'" library patron Eva Murray told the Bangor Daily News. Murray recently returned to Matinicus Island from the mainland to purchase several historically banned titles from the library.The library has since become referred to as the literary equivalent of the "Island of Misfit Toys," the place where unwanted and discarded toys live in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
