Banned Books Reading

Wed., Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322, freelibrary.org.

by Lauren Seibert

[ activism/reading ]

Not even Pooh Bear gets off scot-free. Every year classics like The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird — along with seemingly innocent children's books like Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte's Web (don't ask) — face banishment from schools and shelves around the world. "In this time, people think banned books are not an issue," says Lee Fishman, assistant chief of the Free Library. "But there are still groups around the country who want to control what people read." John Timpane of The Philadelphia Inquirer will host the event, along with a handful of Philadelphia artists and personalities, such as actor and filmmaker Jared Martin, playwright Ed Shockley, director Jane Stojak and comic artist Brad Guigar, who will read passages from their favorite banned books. The issue of censorship hits close to home for Shockley, whose own plays have been banned on occasion for his "rough urban language." He notes that books are often banned for reasons that, a decade later, no one even understands. "Ten years from now, people will laugh about this, at the irrationality," says Shockley, who will read a passage from Things Fall Apart. Stojak, planning to read from An American Tragedy, agrees. "I believe that books should never be banned," she says. "A step in that direction, even just a little bit, is really a slippery slope."

Wed., Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322, freelibrary.org.