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Exhibits

AADL 20th Anniversary Exhibit

Thursday June 2, 2016: 9:00am to Tuesday August 30, 2016
Downtown Library: Lower Level Display Cases

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Blog Post

It's Banned Books Week! Sept. 27 - Oct. 3

by badwolf

What is Banned Books Week, you may ask? It's an event put on by the American Library Association every year to celebrate the freedom to read! The ALA does not believe in censorship, and celebrating banned or challenged books draws attention to the harm potentially caused when access is restricted. If you haven't already, come check out our Banned Books Week display in the Downtown Youth Department and take a peek at the books we've chosen to highlight - some of them may surprise you!

What does it mean if a book is challenged or banned? Well, it simply means that someone doesn't like it! It could be a parent who doesn't agree with their child's assigned reading list for school, or a teacher who doesn't believe a particular title should be allowed in his/her district's curriculum. Books are challenged with the best intentions - to protect others, most commonly children, from difficult ideas and information. However, banning a book goes far beyond simply expressing a point of view or exercising beliefs. Removing material from a school's curriculum or the public library restricts the access of others who may not hold those same beliefs.

If you've had a chance to look at the display or check out the list of titles that are in it, you're probably wondering why some great books have been challenged or banned. Well, hold onto your hats and find some pearls to clutch, because we're about to tell you!

Here’s a list of the books in our display case in the same order in which you'll see them. Underneath each title are the reasons that were listed on formal complaints filed against them and basic summaries of the content that prompted these complaints.


- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- promotes disobedience, too violent
- Katniss defies President Snow's authority, and there is a lot of bloodshed in the Hunger Games.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
- promotes witchcraft and Satanism
- Magic is a normal part of everyday life in Harry's world.
- Drama by Raina Telgemeier
- sexually explicit
- There is an openly gay character, and two boys kiss in the school play when one plays a female character and the other a male character.
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence, depictions of bullying
- A Native American boy is sent to an all-white high school, where he faces racism and bullying.
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
- gambling, offensive language, political viewpoint, “politically, racially, and socially offensive,” “graphic depictions”
- The main character grows up in the middle of a war and witnesses violence and death, and since the book is a graphic novel, there are illustrations of these events.
- Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- racism
- Native Americans are depicted as “terrible savages.”
- A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
- promotes violence, disrespect, and disobedience
- There are poems about disobeying parents, being selfish or lazy, and lying.
- King & King by Linda deHaan
- homosexuality, anti-family, undermines religious freedom, considered “pornography” for showing a family situation that is different from traditional marriage
- The prince wants to marry another prince instead of a princess.
- Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
- offensive language, violence, sexually explicit, implied nudity
- Captain Underpants flies around in just his underwear and a cape.
- Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
- socially offensive
- The police characters are pigs and are depicted as inept.
- The Rabbits’ Wedding by Garth Williams
- socially offensive
- A black rabbit wants to marry a white rabbit.
- Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
- promotes witchcraft
- Strega Nona is the loveable town witch to whom everyone turns in their time of need.
- And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- anti-family, homosexuality, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, “promotes the homosexual agenda”
- Two male penguins are given an egg to raise together.
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- promotes/glorifies dangerous behavior (tantrums), child abuse
- Max throws a lot of tantrums and is “deprived” of food as punishment.
- Nappy Hair* by Carolivia Herron
- racially insensitive
- A little African-American girl's hair is described as "nappy" and "knotted up" by her family.
- Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
- pro-homosexuality, anti-family, unsuitable for children
- The main character has two moms instead of a mom and a dad.
So there you have it! If you're feeling a little rebellious, go ahead and check these titles out. We won't tell.

*Are you looking for Nappy Hair in our catalog, but can't find it? Never fear! We only have one copy in the system, and since it's currently in the display case, it has to be marked as "unavailable." Check back in a few weeks!

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Public Event

Library Camp: An Unconference

Friday May 8, 2015: 9:30am to 4:30pm
Downtown Library: Training Center, Downtown Library: Conference Room A, Downtown Library: aadlfreespace, Downtown Library: 4th Floor Meeting Room
Information Professionals And Graduate Students With An Interest In Libraries

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Blog Post

Film Screening: "Going Blind"

by Beth Manuel

U of M's Hatcher Graduate Library will be screening the film "Going Blind" on Wednesday, April 15th from 5-7 PM. It's a documentary of personal stories of people coping with vision loss, and bringing awareness to low vision therapy. While you're at the Hatcher Graduate Library, check out the exhibit promoting the Washtenaw Library for the Blind & Physically Disabled. If you have any questions about the service, please give us a call at 734-327-4224 or send us an email: wlbpd@aadl.org.

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Blog Post

Treasures of the British Library

by muskrat

I am recently back from London where I visited the British Library's Sir John Ritblat Gallery. Among its treasures are the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare's First Folio, and the only remaining medieval manuscript of Beowulf.

There's nothing like seeing rare books in person but you can't browse through them. Now, for selected items, the British Library allows you to do that online at their virtual books page. Here you can read handwritten books by Lewis Carroll and Jane Austen, examine William Blake's, Mozart's and Leonardo's notebooks, and study the drawings in The Birds of America and the Medieval Bestiary. A "Read" option brings up the text of or commentary for the work (Carroll's handwriting is neatly legible but Jane Austen's is not). A "Listen" option reads the text or commentary to you.

I didn't learn about the treasures on the British Library website from my British Library visit. I learned by looking at the Books and Reading page at aadl.org. You can also find the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the New York Review of Books and dozens of other options there.

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Blog Post

Bibliocraft - A Crafter/Library Lover's Dream

by nicole

An honest question here: Do you love your library? If you're here, on this page, reading this, then I can pretty much guess that you do. I'm not surprised; your library has so much to offer! Books, and games, and science-y things--and now, for all of you library-loving crafters out there, a book that can help you combine your crafting talents and your undying love of all things LIBRARY.

Bibliocraft. How perfect is that? A book that tells its reader all about how to harvest crafting inspiration from the endless potential on the library shelves. It starts you out slow and steady, walking you through some library basics, like how to find what you want in a library catalog and some important points about copyright in library books.

And then it gets real. Part 2: THE CRAFTS.

The rest of the book is a smorgasbord of amazing projects inspired by library resources like, oh, perhaps, the ones you might find here. Historic watermarks transformed into pillows, Japanese family crests turned into coasters, votive holders, pendants made from quilled paper, and, my personal favorite, instructions for making a pocketed kitty-kat apron. With...wait for it...additional instructions for making actual knitted kittens to put in those pockets. Because why not?

You had me at "kitties", Bibliocraft.

And don't forget, along with this biblio-gem, the library has dozens of other awesome craft books and crafting programs, so make sure to check them out! (...see what I did there?)

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Blog Post

Red Libraries

by iralax

In the epilogue of Rosamund Bartlett's Tolstoy: A Russian Life, she traces the evolution of the great writer’s place in the new Bolshevik state. Some of this appraisal, not surprisingly, was based on an article V.I. Lenin wrote in 1908 praising Tolstoy's immense pride in his mother country, while being critical of his lifelong attachment to the gentry. In a speech by , made on Sept. 9, 1928, the centenary of the Tolstoy’s birth, the Bolshevik journal Red Librarian stated that Count Leo Tolstoy was the only pre-revolutionary Russian writer to have maintained his popularity. Bartlett stated that rural Russians often waited for months to read the one copy of War and Peace from the local library. It’s good to know that libraries and the Red Librarian had a place in the Soviet Union, and that you can still get many of Tolstoy’s works at aadl!

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Blog Post

For the Child Learning to Write: Little Red Writing

by annevm

Little Red Writing by Joan Holub is a fun, witty picture book about Little Red, a brave little red pencil who sets out to write a story using what she knows about grammar and writing. First, however, she must face the hungry pencil sharpener, the Wolf 3000. Here is a sample of the cleverness of this book: ". . . she found herself writing a sentence that would not end but just kept going and going and running on and on although it had no purpose yet it would not get out of her story or say anything important . . . " School Library Journal named this one of the Best Picture Books of 2013.

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Blog Post

Great Library Collections At Your Fingertips!

by schoenbaechlere

If you've always been curious about the treasures hidden deep inside the Vatican Library or the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, wonder no more! The two libraries are in the midst of a four-year project to digitize many of their most important works, including various Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and Gutenberg Bibles. Accessing the digitized content can be done by visiting http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/.

And if you've always wanted to check out the Vatican and Bodleian Libraries in person but just can't find the time, you're in luck! From DVDs about the collections, to Books about the buildings, to Audiobooks about the people who have shaped them, AADL has you covered!