Erin Kettle

Joined Literary Arts for an entertaining evening with Patrick Radden Keefe after not making it a few years prior due to a very Portland snow “storm” 🫣 Go pick up London Falling!

Happy World Book Day! I’m joining in encouraging you to keep reading banned books, which are often books written by writers of color and q***r writers. These stories matter and deserve to be read, not censored! 📚

A fantastic author and felt like we were sitting in a pub swapping stories Literary Arts

Go read, JAMES!

A great event with Percival Everett, beyond esteemed author, Brown grad, USC professor, he is a lover of donkeys and fixing up old guitars 💜 Literary Arts

Do you have a pug table? Happy

For Banned Books Week, we're honoring an author who has stood up for the freedom to read for over fifty years -- Judy Blume! The beloved author of many Mighty Girl favorites such as "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret", "Deenie", and "Tiger Eyes," Blume has been writing children's and young adult fiction for decades.

What many of Judy Blume's young fans rarely realized, however, is that the frank discussion of topics like religion, puberty, and sexuality in her books -- the same honesty that makes them so appealing to young readers -- made her one of the most frequently challenged children's authors. As she once observed, by the 1980s, “censors crawled out of the woodwork, organized and determined. Not only would they decide what their children could read but what all children could read... Suddenly books were seen as dangerous to young minds.”

Even as a relatively new author, though, instead of bowing to the criticisms, Blume persisted in writing openly and honestly about issues affecting young people -- and speaking up for authors, teachers, librarians, and others who face disapproval, insults, and even the loss of jobs and careers because they refuse to remove books from the hands of young readers. As such, she has become a champion for children's freedom to read -- and authors' freedom to write -- about topics that some find controversial.

Banned Book Week is an annual event which celebrates the freedom to read and the highlights the value of free and open access to information. In honor of Banned Books Week 2025, we are proud to present our tribute to Judy Blume's career, both as an author of many beloved Mighty Girl books and as a determined and forceful voice against censorship and book banning. In a time when Blume's books still face challenges, her experiences combating censorship -- and her powerful words about the value of making complex and daring books accessible to kids -- are more important than ever.

To read our blog post, "Protecting 'The Books That Will Never Be Written'": Judy Blume's Fight Against Censorship," visit https://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=7425

For two inspiring books about girls fighting against censorship in schools - both for ages 9 to 12 - we highly recommend "Ban This Book" (https://www.amightygirl.com/ban-this-book) and "Property of the Rebel Librarian" (https://www.amightygirl.com/property-of-the-rebel-librarian)

For children's books about girls living in real-life societies throughout history with little respect for freedom of expression, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426

For a thought-provoking young adult novel exploring censorship, we recommend "Suggested Reading" for ages 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/suggested-reading

And for Mighty Girl stories that pay tribute to the transformative power of books, check out our blog post "Celebrating a Love of Reading: 35 Mighty Girl Stories about Books, Libraries, and Literacy" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11656

Last night Literary Arts had an intriguing and funny literary conversation with Abraham Verghese for The Covenant of Water that I cannot wait to read.

Go pick it up, all 722 pages of riveting work. 🙌👏🫶

Looking for bookish holiday gifts?

https://www.uncommongoods.com/product/banned-books-puzzle-reading-checklist

Banned Books Puzzle & Reading Checklist | Books Piece together a puzzle featuring a curated collection of books written by underrepresented voices. 500 pieces.

😂😂

A cartoon by Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby.

See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/kg7e5Q

Happy Thursday with a little Lewis Carroll

Down the Rabbit Hole I love this quote from ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND Author Lewis Carroll: “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Seeing as many day…

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