This week marks the annual Banned Books Week across the country, which celebrates free speech and rallies against censorship. The Hawaiʻi Library Association and American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii partnered to launch this year's celebration, which is themed “Censorship is so 1984. Read for your rights".

Democrat Rhode Island lawmakers on Wednesday promoted a suite of bills motivated by the Freedom to Read movement — an assertion of libraries’ right to hold controversial books, amid an ongoing culture clash over the written word.