PORTLAND, Ore. — As part of Banned Book Week, Powell's Books is donating a portion of its sales to the American Booksellers for Free Expression to help fund ongoing lawsuits against book ban laws.
Between Sept. 22-28, for any book bought from Powell's Banned Book list, 20% of the sale will be donated. There are over 150 books on the list available to be purchased, including book titles such as "Hunger Games," "1984," "Heartstopper" and "The Color Purple."
Books bans throughout the U.S. are on the rise, according to a study from PEN America, a free speech advocacy group. In the 2023-2024 academic years over 10,000 books were banned in public schools — nearly triple the amount seen in the year prior. There were 3,362 instances of book bans in the 2022–2023 school year.
"To us, the effort to ban a book is a symptom of, among other things, fear — not of the book but of the ideas within it," Powell's Books said on its website. "Yet, each of us generally has the confidence in our own judgment to know that a book filled with ideas we discount or despise will not magically cause us to embrace these ideas and reject our values."
To push back against the rise in book bans, a bill sponsored by Sen. Lew Frederick (D-Portland) aimed to prohibit the banning of books in Oregon schools. Senate Bill 1583 passed the Oregon Senate in the 2024 Legislative session, but failed to pass the House before the end of the session.
"If you are not allowing kids to have books, and you are telling them what books they have to read or what books they can't read, you are basically setting them up for not understanding the world we have around us," Frederick said after the bill passed the Senate.