The Office for Intellectual Freedom would like to cordially invite you and your families to attend the annual Banned Books Read-Out! this Saturday afternoon, September 26th, 2009. The event will be held at Bughouse Square, just up the street from ALA headquarters at the corner of Walton Street and Dearborn Street in Chicago. It begins at noon, and is scheduled to be over by 3PM.

We have a great group of authors scheduled to speak and read; best of all, they will have (limited) copies of their books to give away and sign.

The line-up is:

• Chris Crutcher, author of Athletic Shorts, Whale Talk, Chinese Handcuffs and many more. Chris will be our MC.
• Sarah S. Brannen, author of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, number eight of the Top Ten Challenged Books of 2008.
• Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the Gossip Girl series and Jen’s personal hero, number seven on the Top Ten list.
• Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, number six on the Top Ten list.
• Lauren Myracle, author of TTYL, TTFN, and L8R G8R, number three on the Top Ten list.
• Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, authors of And Tango Makes Three, number one on the Top Ten list for three years.

After these authors read, we’ll be holding an open mic for any audience member to read from their favorite challenged book.

Additional goody from ALA
To kick off Banned Books Week 2009, ALA published a new Banned Books Week PSA featuring the puppets from “Crash Pad.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLprbWMd8mM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]