 Thank you so much for coming out to see me to join us for this wonderful program on fan books and the importance of the free movie. And here I have the lovely and wonderful Sheila Bumman from Montana State University, we're thrilled because this is one of several programs that the President of the Library is able to co-sponsor to do together with the wonderful library and faculty from Montana State University Library. And so we're thrilled that everybody is here and we're thrilled to really have this partnership. I'll introduce the committee, who is on the committee for this evening, who's brave enough to stand up. Jane, do you want to stand up? Is Carmen in here? Well actually we have more than one person on the committee. Sheila makes two. And Layla? Layla, Angela, and Michelle. And Rita is helping a customer, she got pulled, Rita from the high school, and Carmen will be here shortly. And Ariana is serving in the Country Bookshelf, and we are also cosponsoring with the Country Bookshelf. Thank you very much for your ongoing support of our programs, Ariana. Appreciate it. I'll see her at 5.30 on the news, you can catch her at 10 o'clock. Maybe at the same time, she'll get a great Olympia. One thing before Sheila does an introduction for us, I do want to point out that in your chair, you should have an evaluation plan. And if you would be kind enough to tell that tonight and give it to a decision, that will help us with making different extras. Well we're coming, we're really excited to see you here and see something nice here now. You just never know when you're finding these events, what you're eating with on a particular night, and that's what's always wonderful when you come out and brew this bowl. So thanks a lot for coming. So before we get started, we have a wonderful lineup of readers for you tonight about what are we doing here tonight? What are we celebrating tonight? Today is the second day of a week-long celebration called Man and Books Week. And it's an annual event, happened every fall, usually around this time of year. And it was started in 1982, so it's had a long, long life, started by the American Library Association and his Office for Intellectual Freedom, and is also sponsored by the Association of American Book Sellers, the National Council of Teachers of the English, and some other like-minded organizations, so it's a big collaboration. And this event is basically to celebrate our freedom to read. And in support of the freedom to seek and express ideas, even those that some consider unorthodox or unpopular, these are guaranteed to aspire to first amendment. Now, fortunately, ever since books came out, they've been challenged or banned. I mean, you go back to British history and there were people saying, oh, Aristotle, we don't want that stuff. It's dangerous. And challenges and occasional bound can still occur in this country and even forced to home. I don't know how many of you know that just last spring, this spring in Livingston, the young adult novel, Conzilla, by Adam Wrapp, was the subject of a challenge at Park County High School. And the absolutely true diary of part-time Indian by Sherman Alexi was challenged with the Billing School as they did before. Happily, both districts had great policies in place for dealing with challenges. They went through those policies, followed the process, and neither challenge succeeded. But they just don't go away. They keep coming up with challenges. And very often, the banning succeeded. It was the recent one in the East Bay High School in North Carolina, which banned Tony Morrison's bluest eye from this curriculum. Very, very sad to say. So sometimes the challenge is to succeed. So Bantbuck's Weeks tries to focus efforts across the country about these challenges, banning just to keep awareness up that these things do happen and draw attention to the Harps and Stencers show. Happily, though these challenges continue and occasionally bannings do take place, I think a lot of the celebration is in part because most of the time those challenges do not succeed. And the folks and those materials remain where they should be in the classrooms and in libraries. And this only happens to the efforts of bad news librarians, teachers. We have teachers and a number of students, community members who will stand up and speak out for this freedom to read and support that. And this year is a little interesting because Bantbuck's Weeks has never had an additional theme. This year they decided to focus attention on graphic novels and comics, which are graphic novels. Comics have been around for a long time, they've been challenged since day one, too, as I've been for children. And graphic novels, which is a newer form of that, those books have been making the top ten down lists for quite a while now, so a lot of attention has been paid to those. So we have, for tonight's celebration, we've invited some local authors. We're really excited to have local authors here to work with us, educators and librarians, and they're all going to share a short passage from a favorite book that's been a subject of a challenge in the school library. And we are featuring the, and this is the first time we've ever done it, but it's going to work really great because of the language that it was. We're going to actually show the graphics that go along with those readings for those particular selections. We're excited about that. So I hope you enjoy the evening and I'm going to turn it over to Susan, who will introduce our readers. A reader of the saving is Mr. Kent Davis. Kent is going to be reading from Senna by Neil Bane. Thanks so much for the book. We'll look at the library and also the MSU libraries, and also the arianon. It's inside of my Confucian bookshelf book, which is an essential order for tomorrow. Because I lost my copy of The Kindly Ones by Neil Gannon, which is a companion of his groundbreaking and awesome and amazing and subversive graphic model that I grew up with. And this is a scene, this is Rose Walker is going to visit her friend Zelda at Hospice. Rose Walker's journal had been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. Sometimes I feel shit, I don't know, hollowed. Mostly when I don't feel what I ought to feel inside. I've got a friend who's dying from AIDS. How does that make me feel? Empty, that's all. Just empty. I say, oh that it's me, it's Rose. Rose, that's right. How you doing today? Oh, a bit crazy for a while. I can't swallow properly throughout all my pills again. And I'm so horny. I can't scream. Well, hang in there. Did I ever tell you the story about the footsteps in the sand? And there are two sets of footsteps together because of some of them are gods, except there aren't always two of them. And the woman says to God, where were you when I was in trouble? And he says that it was me carrying you. He told me it's a very great story. Whatever, Rose, in these days I just feel like gods dumped me down in the sand. Do you believe in God? I love you to lots of things. Chantale did believe in God. She looked at spiders and skulls and graveyards for themselves. I love them because they showed transience. You're spying on me. What are you spying on now? I don't know because you never used to speak, I suppose. Chantale did all the speaking for both of you because I was sitting there not saying stammer because the last time I finished one of her sentences she started to cry and would talk again for an hour. This is stuttered. I thought skulls were a way of touching forever. Can you see my skull yet? They're getting pretty skinny, Zelda. They're not yet. And there's just so many things inside of that little short passage. And Sandman is about so many. It's one of these huge, huge issues and these small, small issues. But the two things, the reason why I chose this particular passage one is that it questions the status quo. It questions school. For kids, that's a big deal. And it also questions belief. And for people, that's a big deal. But I think the thing that's important to remember is that questioning isn't necessarily defiant. Ms. Mollinay is going to be from The Glass Castle by Jeanette Reynolds. Thanks for having me here. I wrote this book probably five years ago. And I'm going to read from the back because it's a good disorder description of what it was about. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption. A revelatory look into a family that wants deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeanette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The wall of children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another. And eventually they found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, but she seemed to be homeless, even as their children prospered. So part of what I'm going to imagine with this book from me is that Jeanette Walls has a huge opportunity here to take the tone of self-pity. There's a lot in this book that's really hard to read. But she somehow consists of straightforward narrative and because of that it really endears me to her. And that's hard to do, I think, with memoirs of this sort of matter. So I'm going to read a little passage here. And this line, I want you to listen for it, she says, Mom liked to encourage self-sufficiency of all living creatures. So that's a real sort of subtle, not so subtle way of her pulling the theme out for us. And it's enjoyable as a reader to come upon that and then otherwise report back. Awesome battle mountainous filled with animals that came and went, stray dogs and cats, their puppies and kittens, non-poisonous snakes and lizards and torches we caught in the desert. A coyote that seemed pretty tame lived with us for a while. And once dad brought home a wounded buzzard that we named Buster. He was the ugliest pet we ever owned. Whenever we fed Buster scraps of meat, he turned his head sideways and he stared us out of one angry looking yellow eye. Then he screamed and frantically flapped his good wing. I was secretly glad when his hurt wing healed and he flew away. Every time we saw buzzards that we never had, dad would say that he recognized Buster among them and that he was coming back to thank us. But I knew Buster would never even consider returning. That buzzard didn't have an ounce of gratitude in him. We couldn't afford pet food so the animals had to eat our leftovers and there usually wasn't much. They don't like it they can leave said mom. Just because they live here doesn't mean I'm going to weigh on them hand and foot. Mom told us that we were actually doing the animals a favor by not allowing them to become dependent on us. That way if we ever had to leave, they'd be able to get by on their own. Mom liked to encourage self-sufficiency in all living creatures. Mountain also believed in letting nature take its course. She refused to kill the flies that always filled the house. She said they were nature's spoons for the birds and lizards and the birds and lizards were food for the cats. Kill the flies when you start for cats she said. Letting the flies live in her view was the same as buying cat food on the cheetah. One day I was visiting my friend Carla when I noticed that her house didn't have any flies. I asked her mother why. She pointed towards a shiny gold contraption dangling from the ceiling which she proudly identified as a shell no pest strip. She said it could be bought at the filling station and that her family had one in every room. A no pest strip she explained released a poison that killed all the flies. What are your lizards eat I asked. You don't have any lizards either she said. I went home and I told mom we needed to get a no pest strip like Carla's family but she refused. The kills the flies she said can't be very good for us. So that's just a short passage from this book. Really worth reading if you guys have it. It's just filled with rich, rich narrative and fabric of family. You have this thing of long-winded finish. It's truly how Sandra Briggs is going to read for us. And Tango makes three with Justin Richardson and Peter Permanent. Reading from and Tango makes three. It's a picture book illustrated by Candid Cole who was here last year at our children's book festival. This book was published in 2005. It was banned 2007 through 2012 each year. You can also receive date prestigious awards during that time including American Library Association's notable book award and the bank street best book of the year award. Because of the time constraints I'm going to I'm going to read the beginning but I'll probably even skip this and not read every word of this. In the middle of New York City there's a great big park called Central Park. Children love to play there. It has a joyful pond where they can sail their boats. It has a carousel to ride on in the summer and an ice rink to skate on in the winter. Best of all it has its very own zoo. Every day families of all kinds go to visit the animals that live there. But children and their parents aren't the only families at the zoo. The children make family the animals make families of their own. There are red panda bear families with mothers and fathers and furry red panda bear cubs. There are monkey dads and monkey prongs. There are monkey babies, total families. And in the penguin house there are penguin animals. Every year at the same time the girl penguins start noticing the boy penguins. And the boy penguins start noticing the girls. When the right girl and the right boy find each other they become a couple. Two penguins in the penguin house were a little bit different. One was named Roy and the other was named Silo. Roy and Silo were both boys but they did everything together. They bowed to each other and walked together. They sang to each other and swam together. Wherever Roy went Silo went too. They didn't spend much time with the girl penguins and the girl penguins didn't spend much time with them. Instead Roy and Silo wound their necks around each other. The keeper, Mr. Gramsley, noticed the two penguins and thought they seemed to be in love. Roy and Silo watched how the other penguins were at home. So they built a nest in stones for themselves. And every night Roy and Silo slept there together just like the other penguins. Every morning Roy and Silo woke up together. One day Roy and Silo saw that the other couples could get something they could not. The momma penguin would lay an egg. She and the pappa penguin would take turns keeping the egg warm and to find it would hatch and then there would be a baby penguin. I'm going to kind of give a little summary because I have to stop somewhere and for Jay could read the whole book. So Roy and Silo find that their nest is a little bit empty. They go in search of an egg to sit on. They too want to have a baby chip to feed and care for and love. So they find a rock that looks like an egg and they put it in their nest. They take turns sitting on it day and night, day and night. This zookeeper found, was watching all of us and he had a fertilized egg from another couple and couple who had two eggs and couldn't sit on to put that fertilized egg in Roy and Silo's nest. And the book says Roy and Silo knew just what to do. They took turns sitting on the egg day and night. They one would leave and go get food and come back in the other center. They sat on it for over a month just like all the other penguins were doing until crack. Out came a little baby chick who the zookeeper named Tango as it takes two to Tango. Then after that it's a life away. The babies teach Tango everything she needs to know. They feed her from their beaks. They teach her how to sing for her food. They snuggle with her in their nest. And the day that they debut and bring her out into the zoo pool for the first time, all of the patrons of the zoo, the people who've been coming and watching and waiting to see this baby all applaud. And it ends at night the three penguins return to their nest. There they snuggle together all the other penguins in the penguin house, all the other animals in the zoo and all the families in the big city around them. They went to sleep. This, the thing that's interesting about this book is that it's based on a true story. It's based on the story of all those six years in the life of two chins trapped penguins who lived in Central Park Zoo. And they were given this egg to raise and this is the story. So this book was challenged for homosexuality. The line in front of the challenge of this book was Tango, was the first penguin in the zoo to have two penguins. I have to say the reason I chose this book is, I remember when it came into the life of Ashley in 2005, to me it is just a touching and joyful story about love and devotion of parents for their child. And it just comes across this way. It's really about the need for family. If this book introduces a child with same sex parents, I think it's a tender and wonderful way to do it. And I think that really what matters to the young child, a young child reading this book is how the love comes across. It's just very heartwarming how these daddies take care of their child. In addition, one reason why I chose this book is I just enchanted the name it calls art in this book. It's, Henry called it his best. If the faces and the bodies of the penguins, if you study the illustrations as children do, are incredibly expressive. The picture is really, when you tell the story without words, you could get the gist of the story. The words weren't there. You did such a beautiful job. I think for children with same sex parents, I command in the story being of providing some scaffolding for future interactions about their family. And for any child, this book invites discussion of different kinds of families and children today in our world are familiar with this diversity and they attend school organizations, society, and all around them. So I think we'll read this book in page three and see what you think through the childhood war by Robert Cornley. I was a teenage guinea pig. Sometime around 1976, I was used as a test case for the Teton County School Board. My mother, who worked for the school at the time, had been approached by a member of the school board who'd heard through the grapevine that her son was a bit of a reader. Maybe young Mr. Abrams could take a look at a book that had come to their attention recently and tell the school board that it was suitable for young audiences in Jackson, Wyoming. This person who cut a deal with my mother was probably a decent guy overall, but when it came to ultra-conservatism, he was the champ. Names aren't important. It's all watered under the bridge by this point, but for the sake of identification, let's just say his first name was Ass, last name Pucker. Anyway, word had reached my mother that Mr. Pucker was looking for a kid to read a book that, according to certain members of the school board, might not be suitable for the curriculum, a book which might be too rough for young delicate eyes. And so my mother approached me with a proposition, read this and tell me if it's okay to be taught during which class. Imagine that. Me, the perpetually skinny, stuttering, anxiety-britten, least popular boy in Jacksonville, junior high, was being asked to render an opinion which could potentially have cataclysmic life-altering impacts. I said, okay. So my mother reached into a brown paper sack. She looked around and made sure that we were alone, and then she handed me the book, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. I turned to the first page and I started reading. They heard again. Well, okay, that was a pretty good beginning. So I went on. As he turned to take the ball, a damned burst against the side of his head and a hand grain shattered his stomach. In gulf by nausea, he pitched toward the grass. His mouth encountered gravel, and he spat frantically, afraid that some of his teeth had been knocked down. Okay, not bad. Not bad at all. As it turns out, The Chocolate War was not only not bad, it was damn good. That guy getting figuratively murdered on the football field, by the way, in the opening paragraphs was Jerry Renault. He's a freshman at an all-boys Catholic prep school who does one very important thing during a school fundraiser. He says no. Despite no, he's not going to sell chocolates. Despite the peer pressure and taunts from a particularly unpleasant teacher named brother Leon, and bullying at the hands of the secret society of what were classmen called the vigils, Jerry Renault stands firm in his refusal to sell boxes of chocolate to raise money for his school. It's a novel about the solitary David facing down the evil corporate Goliath. What's not to love? I mean, why the concern? Why the rush to ban this smart, provocative book? I got my answer on page 17. Why did he always feel so guilty whenever he looked at Playboy and the other magazines? A lot of guys bought them, passed them around at school, hid them in the covers of notebooks, even resold them. Ah, there's the rub, so to speak. I'm still a professor. I can't turn the page. Anyway, the book goes on, the passage goes on, skipping ahead a little bit. And this is talking about Jerry. A longing filled him. Would a girl ever love him? The one devastating sorrow he carried with him was the fear that he would die before holding a girl's breast in his hand. So in all fairness, I could see the reason for Mr. Pucker's sway, he won't worry. But in all honesty, this Deton County School Board's efforts to ban teenage boys from thinking of such matters was about as effective as telling the wind to stop blowing. What teenage boy didn't hide a Playboy under his mattress? Or today find ways to, uh,