Every year, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks books that are challenged by members of the community, banned from libraries or are otherwise restricted in libraries. The organization recently released the top ten books (or series) that were most challenged last year, included below, all of which can be found at Queens Library.
Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie
“Thirteen Reasons Why,” by Jay Asher
“Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James
“And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
“The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini
“Looking for Alaska,” by John Green
Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
“The Glass Castle,” by Jeannette Walls
“Beloved,” by Toni Morrison
A note on our collection development: The Library opposes any attempts by individuals or groups of individuals to censor materials selected for its Community Libraries and Central Library collections. Further, the Library's decision to acquire or remove materials from its collections will not be determined by partisan or doctrinal points of view.
Earth Day is Monday, April 22, but you can celebrate our planet all month long with Queens Library, including at our weeklong film festival (see below).
Earth Week Green Film Festival
April 20—27 at Queens Library at Astoria, Broadway, Steinway, Sunnyside and Woodside
Catch free screenings of:
Dirt! The Movie - Monday, 4/22 at 3 p.m., Woodside Library
The future of the outer layer of earth and the place where nearly all the world's vegetation comes to life is in peril. Filmmakers Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow explain how we must protect it! Check out the movie.
Fuel - Saturday, 4/20 at 3 p.m., Steinway Library; Monday, 4/22 at 4:30 p.m., Astoria Library
Discover the shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry and the government, while learning about alternative energies. Check out the movie.
The Greenhorns - Monday, 4/22 at 4 p.m., Steinway Library; Thursday, 4/25 at 5 p.m., Astoria Library
What are the conditions facing this generation of agriculture workers? Get an inside look at America’s young farming community, its spirit, practices and needs.
Get Vegucated - Saturday, 4/20 at 3 p.m., Sunnyside Library; Saturday, April 27 at 3 p.m., Steinway Library
Can we create a greener world through nutrition? Three New Yorkers, used to consuming meat and dairy products, attempt to adopt a strict vegan diet. Check out the movie.
Queen of the Sun - Monday, April 22 at 6 p.m., Sunnyside Library
With bees involved in the growth of 40 percent of the world's food, restoring the global bee population—which has been on a mysterious decline—is of crucial importance and the subject of this documentary. Check out the movie.
A Man Named Pearl - Saturday, April 27 at 3 p.m., Sunnyside Library
Pearl's dazzling garden has served as an inspiration to his family, his community and the thousands of visitors who come to experience Pearl's world each year. Check out the movie.
Beijing Besieged by Waste (In Chinese) - Wednesday, April 24 at 4:30 p.m., Sunnyside Library
Filmmaker Wang Jiuliang travels to more than 500 landfills, documenting Beijing’s cycle of consumption and waste through.
Cartoneros (In Spanish) - Saturday, 4/20 at 3 p.m., Broadway Library
This film is both a record of an economic and social crisis and an invitation to audiences to rethink the value of trash.
As the world commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, on April 8, Queens Library at Astoria invited young library visitors to learn about the Holocaust. To remember and honor children who lost their lives as a result of this tragedy, we created butterflies, penning our favorite quotes about kindness on them.
On Friday, March 8, the Consul General of Japan in New York, Shigeyuki Hiroki, came to the Queens Library at Peninsula.
Our libraries in the Rockaways have had a rough time since Superstorm Sandy, which sent a huge storm surge through the plate glass windows of four locations, ruining books, furniture, electronics and wiring. Queens Library at Seaside, where I am the library manager, is still undergoing repairs.
At the Peninsula Library, we brought a mobile library to serve the community until temporary trailers could be delivered. We expect the main building will be open later this year, but in the meantime, we do our best in a much smaller space.
Japan has faced really bad natural disasters in the past, like earthquakes and tsunamis, so the Consul General wanted to help! In preparation of his visit, we here at Peninsula did a nice origami display. We also made a sign in Japanese that said, “Welcome to Queens Library” with a picture of a Japanese Bobtail, which is a special cat from Japan.
When the Consul General came, he was so happy to see the origami and the signs! The Consul General also brought his friends, including some executives from some major Japanese publishing companies, as well as the wife of U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, Simone-Marie Meeks!
I was talking with Ms. Kumi Shimizu, General Manager of Kodansha USA Publishing, who translated my name Kacper Jarecki phonetically into Japanese. Evidently it means “Evil Devil.” I was so surprised!
The Consul General gave a really nice speech. Tom Galante, the Queens Library President & CEO, also gave a nice speech. Then the Japanese Consul gave the library such a nice gift: $10,000 and 200 books to help rebuild. That was such a generous present, and everyone from the library was so thankful!
Then it was time to go, so we said, “Sayonara,” which means “goodbye” in Japanese. In fact, the Consul General told me before he left to study Japanese, so I signed up for Japanese classes at the Japan Society. Taking those classes was so much fun! I even met another staff member from Queens Library there! And I met the head librarian of the Brooklyn Historical Society. I also met lots of business executives and an artist. When you try something new, you always get to meet cool people. I was so lucky!
Learning a new language is so exciting and rewarding! Queens Library has lots of cool books and multimedia items about learning a new language (I know because I have borrowed a lot of them). Queens Library also has a fun website where you can learn languages online for free — including Japanese!
If you want to help our libraries in the Rockaways recover, head over here to learn what you can do.
Spring is finally here! To celebrate the arrival of the first day of this season of growth, Queens Library at Sunnyside invited children to participate in an eco-crafts project to make beautiful butterflies. We upcycled coffee filters, folded accordion style, to serve as the bodies of the butterflies, while we reused clothespins to hold our butterflies' wings together. The final touch? Pipe cleaners made for the perfect antennas.
In observance of National Poultry Day, on March 19, Queens Libraries at Woodside and Broadway invited toddlers and their caregivers to make their own unique rooster crafts. Eco-arts fans: We used recycled paper to create the heads and beaks of our rooster creations. Our hand prints served as the comb--the ridges atop of a rooster's head--and scraps of paper were used to make the wattle--just under the rooster's beak.
To celebrate National Name Tag Day, on March 8, and Jewel Day, observed on March 13, Queens Library at Sunnyside invited children and their caregivers to make bejeweled name tags. Eco-arts fans: All the materials used for this craft came from old postcards and donated eco-friendly Avery label samples. For our jewels, we used stickers.
Repurposing old magazines and posters, kids at Queens Library at Sunnyside made their own pi charts for "Pi Day," celebrated every year on March 14 (3/14 or 3.14, like the first three digits in the number pi) all over the world. The symbol for pi is the Greek letter "Π." It is used in mathematics to represent a constant, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter: 3.14159 (and so forth, since pi is an irrational number and continues infinitely). There is no repetition or pattern to pi. It is unique and only a few digits are needed when calculating an equation. Trying to memorize the digits of pi are both challenging and fun. For this project we learned the first 10 digits of the number.
For more ways to celebrate the occasion, visit PiDay.org.
To celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday, on March 2, Queens Libraries at Woodside and Broadway invited children and their caregivers to make 3D aquariums, inspired by Seuss’s book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, a children’s book that teaches readers simple rhymes. Dr. Seuss, whose real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel, was a beloved American author and poet known for his zany and outlandish characters. March 2 was adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative created by the National Education Association to promote literacy. Eco-arts fans: All the paper used for this craft came from old posters and flyers.
It has been months since Superstorm Sandy devastated the East Coast, and things are still far from back to normal in the Rockaways. At the Peninsula Library where I work as the manager, we served the community from a book bus for nearly two months. Priorities have changed several times since then, but the strong focus has always been on helping people in the area.
Sandy sent 4 feet of dirty salt water through the plate glass windows of our library, destroying everything. Our library wasn’t the only one, either. Queens Library at Arverne was devastated by a similar storm surge. Libraries at Seaside and Broad Channel were flooded by lower storm surges, destroying books and furniture.
When Queens Library reopened boroughwide a few days after Sandy , we didn’t quite know what to expect. We were told that many staff members whose libraries were ruined would be assigned to the mobile library being sent to operate outside the Peninsula Library. It turned out that I was headed right into the middle of it.
I’ve only been the library manager at Peninsula since April 2012, but I have a strong connection to the Rockaways. Before Peninsula, I spent 2 ½ years as the manager of the Seaside Library. I proudly took part in the Boardwalk for Books rally we held last year to protest the city’s planned budget cuts to Queens Library. At Peninsula we had built up momentum and were improving services. Recently we added a specialized program, which offers more intense instruction in jobs and technology skills.
A lot of people have asked about my reaction to losing a library, but I mostly cared about whether everyone was okay. I knew that several staff lived in the Rockaways, and I was also concerned about customers I saw regularly.
On the morning of November 2nd, I watched out the window of the Q53 as the bus headed south through Queens. By the time it got to Broad Channel, I could see the devastation: cars pushed into poles, boats lying in the middle of streets, debris everywhere. When the bus came off the Cross Bay Bridge into the Peninsula, I knew that the area was in really bad shape.
When I reported to work, a thick layer of dirt coated the sidewalk in front of the ruined library. My colleagues, Lauren Comito, Tara Lannen-Stanton, Seaside Library manager Kacper Jarecki, and others were there. They had printouts for FEMA, election information, and emergency services. They really understood the need for reliable information.
The next three weeks on the book bus were a blur. Some library workers volunteered on their days off in order to provide seven-day service. Tara Lannen-Stanton donated her coffee maker so everyone could have hot beverages. Kacper Jarecki played scrabble with customers and staff. I think drinking coffee and just talking made the situation a lot better. Information literally was block to block, and people were confused. On Election Day we directed hundreds of people 10 blocks west to their new polling site. People were very appreciative of any help, so I felt we were making a difference.
In December there was a shift. Maybe more locals had their power back, but we became busier with usual library services as opposed to emergency services. A lot of people lost library books and movies in the storm, or stayed away until recently. I’m glad we were able to clear up people’s accounts, and make it so customers did not have to worry about owing the library money for books damaged from the storm. I’m amazed at how many people felt it important to have their library accounts in good standing when they had so many other losses at this time.
As you might imagine, the demand for books soars when a community has no electricity. A lot of local people were generous with donating books to us. Urban Librarians Unite, a nonprofit in the NYC area, donated books to us and other sites. A company called Literacy in Motion dropped off a truck full of book donations, which we are still sorting through. Our customers have been very grateful. It has been a joy to see people excited about choosing books for their personal collections.
We took a step towards normalcy on January 8, when we moved service to a temporary trailer at Peninsula. We got a total of six full time staff, more room, and more of a collection. We still need a larger collection and space for services but one thing is clear: no matter how long it takes to rebuild, we will be here.
What’s going on at Peninsula this week? Check out our Events page. For more Queens Library programming in the Rockaways, check out Queens Library at Far Rockaway. For those still recovering from Sandy’s effects, that library also offers special open computer lab time.
Want to know what you can do to help Queens Library? Visit https://foundation.queenslibrary.org to learn more.