Beaverdale Books thinks you should be able to read whatever books you want. Especially if irate parents and governing bodies are trying to keep them off of shelves.
This Saturday, Oct. 7, Beaverdale Books will be capping off Banned Book Week with its own Banned Books Festival for the first time. The festival — which includes a virtual author visit from Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (And Tango Makes Three), a banned book trivia contest and a keynote appearance from Ashley Hope Pérez (Out of Darkness) — runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Des Moines Franklin Events Center (4801 Franklin Ave).
Little Village sat down with Beaverdale Books’ event coordinator Jan Kaiser and its recently minted full-owner, Hunter Gillum, to talk about this weekend’s festivities for what organizers hope becomes an annual event.
This is the very first time you all have done a Banned Books Festival. Tell me, how did this end up happening?
Jan Kaiser: Actually, I read about a banned books festival in Mississippi at Millsaps College. … I started reading about it and it sounded like a great event, so I came to a staff meeting saying, “Hey! How do you feel about doing a Banned Books Festival?” Hunter and Alice [Meyer, the bookstore’s founder], they didn’t even blink, so that’s what we decided to do.
What has preparing for this event been like? What’s the scope of the first year of this festival?
Hunter Gillum: A lot of it was just availability … especially just for authors. I think we were really hoping to have another author or two there, but we’re happy with what we ended up getting. We knew we wanted to have other books available, so I used a list the Register had put out … the nine most challenged books in Iowa or something like that. So we did those and then the ALA had the most challenged books for last year and so I got all of those and then I went through and looked at just historically challenged books and got a list of ones that kind of just kept on reappearing.
Kaiser: The authors we got — it was kind of serendipity, actually — because Ashley Hope Pérez [the keynote appearance this weekend] her best friend lives here in Des Moines, so she had actually stopped into the store. We visited with her and told her we were thinking about this banned books festival and she’s like, “Oh, I’m all over that.” … Then of course for And Tango Makes Three, the publicist for those two authors is also the publicist for Chasten Buttigieg who we offered earlier, so in visiting with that publicist, I was telling him about the Banned Books [Festival] … I said, “Do you know who the publicist is for And Tango Makes Three?” And he said, “Yeah, it’s me.” So it really was just meant to be!
From a bookseller’s perspective, what kind of jumped out as odd books to ban or challenge as you were going through these lists?
Gillum: I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird, to me, is one that I just always come back to because I just cannot — it’s just so bizarre to me that it’s challenged at all. Then there’s other books like The Catcher in the Rye where it’s just like, I read it and loved it and you just don’t know what their reasoning was to prevent people from reading that. … John Green books, I don’t feel like he does anything that’s [too subversive]. Or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I guess there’s some drug use in there … it’s not so outside the realm of the ordinary that it’s outlandish, but I guess that’s why that one was banned.
Do you know how many books you’re going to have at the festival this weekend?
Gillum: We’ll have about 10 [titles from] the Iowa [challenged books list], 10 for the ALA list and then we came up with an adult, a picture book, a middle grade and a YA [list]. … We’re at 100-some [titles].
When you go through [banned books], even just this week, you’ll think, “Oh, I should have had Jerry Craft’s New Kid” or “What was I thinking! I should have had Fahrenheit 451.” We can’t have everything … It was surprising the number that just kept popping up.
Given that challenging books and creating legislation to ban them has come up a lot over the past couple of years in Iowa, has that affected you all as booksellers?
Gillum: It even started with the Maus books, this is probably two years ago now, where we’d get people through ordering those books. … A lot of the time people have read about banned or challenged books in Iowa and you see people come in to buy those books specifically.
Kaiser: We’ve even had book clubs who have come in inquiring, looking for a banned book for the book club to read on recommendation.
Gillum: I feel like we’re just naturally curious, so if you’re being told, “No,” then of course you want to see what’s so bad. And a lot of its people having the same experience of having seen some of their favorite books on lists of historically challenged books and they think, “Well if [this other book] is keeping company with that one, then it’s worth checking out.” …
On the Annie’s [Foundation] website they’ll have lists of banned and challenged books and they’ll do a good job of giving the reason and the year it was first banned or challenged, too. For the BFG it was because it provided no morals or something, so it wasn’t even for what it did — it was for what it didn’t do.
What are you hoping people who come out to the event experience this first year?
Gillum: I think people are excited just to go. We get a lot of people coming in commiserating about the bill that they’re trying to pass or school districts in this state or other states that are banning books. So I think just having a place they can go, that sense of community … to get all of those people together will be great.
Kaiser: We really want to celebrate the freedom to read, that’s the key. … Hopefully it can be a fun day and educational and informative.
