International Women’s Day is coming up next week. Every year on March 8 the world takes a day to recognize the ongoing fight for women’s equality. All month long you are invited to join with us in the School Library as we focus on issues related to IWD, including feminism, women authors, equal rights, women’s suffrage, and influential women from history and today.
Do you believe that you should be able to choose what you read? Or should other people be able to decide for you what you can read? Freedom to Read Week celebrates our fundamental freedoms as citizens of democracies and our fundamental rights as human beings. Freedom to Read Week also asks to to beware of the forces at work which erode and seek to destroy your rights and freedoms.
Do you take your Freedom to Read for granted? These are books that are available in our libraries which have been challenged, and in far too many cases, removed from shelves, and banned. Many of the books pictured here are on the list of the top 20 most banned books in the U.S. for the 2021-2022 school year.
This isn’t just happening in authoritarian states such as North Korea, Iran, China or Russia. This is happening in the so-called free world. This is happening in the United States. So far it hasn’t been as bad in Canada, but challenges are growing here and there are too many who want American censorship to come to Canada.
Find out more:
Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools
International Women’s Day is essential for all people. Until women are truly equal and free, the world is not as it should be for any human being.
Find out more:
Join us all month long, in person, and online, as we learn more about the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality for women in Canada, and around the world.
International Women’s Day is coming up soon, just a a few days away: Tuesday, March 8. We are celebrating all month long. Here are some books to help us learn more about the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in Canada and around the world.
Coming Soon: International Women’s Day, March 8, 2022.
Join us we celebrate ALL MONTH!
Do you see any common themes amongst all these books?
These are just some of the books that have been challenged, banned and removed from school libraries in the USA, just this year. The freedom to read what you want to read is a fundamental cornerstone of democracy. However, just as democracy itself is under siege around the world, the freedom to read cannot be taken for granted. Anti-democratic forces are always at work to undermine your freedom to read and other democratic rights. You must stand up for those rights.
Is it a coincidence that the books seen above deal with themes such as discrimination, racism, and oppression, or have central characters that come from marginalized groups?
What do you think?
Find out more: FreedomtoRead.ca
Look for more on Freedom to Read Week in your School Library starting February 22. Meanwhile, be sure to enjoy Family Day on the 21st!
February 20-26 is Freedom to Read Week in Canada.
While this is always an important week on the calendar, this year it seems more vital than ever that we understand and celebrate our freedom to read. South of the border books are being banned at an alarming rate. Throughout the world, the freedom of journalists continues to be threatened. As authoritarian and fascist movements rise around the globe, they attack such things as libraries, a free press, and other cornerstones of democracy and human rights.
Look for more to come on this vital topic, as we prepare for Freedom to Read Week.
Here is just a small sample of books that we have to help you learn more about Black Canadians, African-Americans, and other people in the African Diaspora, as we observe and celebrate Black History Month.
From the United Nations:
Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): a milestone document proclaiming the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
The theme for Human Rights Day 2020 is “Recover Better: Stand Up for Human Rights.” From the UN:
This year’s Human Rights Day theme relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. We will reach our common global goals only if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.
UN.org
Find out more:
Check out these books in your School Library:
From the United Nations:
Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): a milestone document proclaiming the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
The theme for Human Rights Day 2019 is “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights.” The youth of the world, including you, and the other students here at Lord Tweedmsuir, have both the right, and the responsibility, to both celebrate and defend Human Rights for all people.
Find out more:
Check out these books in your School Library:
From the American Libarary Association:
Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.
Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School Library 