On a Monday morning in early October, a table in the lobby of CU Boulder's Engineering Center will hold a stack of books that someone, somewhere, tried to keep off a shelf. Students, faculty, and anyone else who walks through the doors at 1111 Engineering Drive between 10 a.m. and noon on October 5 can take one home, free, no ticket or sign-up required. The giveaway is part of Banned Books Week, the annual observance running October 4–10 in 2026, and it is hosted by the University Libraries.
The premise is simple and a little subversive: the books being handed out are the ones that have drawn the most objections — titles that have been pulled from library shelves, relocated to restricted sections, or made to require a parent's permission before a young reader can check them out. The event asks visitors to consider a question that has become newly urgent in American libraries: who gets to decide what other people are allowed to read?
That question has a number attached to it this year, and the number is stark. The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 4,235 challenged titles in 2025, the second-highest total on record. The ALA also reports that 92 percent of book challenges in 2025 originated from organized movements including pressure groups, government officials, and other decision makers, up from 72 percent in 2024.
Banned Books Week itself dates to 1982, when the American Booksellers Association and a coalition of library and free-speech organizations responded to a sudden surge of school and library challenges by putting challenged titles front and center in bookstore windows and library displays. What began as a booksellers' campaign has become a fixture of the library calendar, now organized by the Banned Books Week Coalition and observed every year in the first week of October. The 2026 theme is "Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read."
CU Boulder's University Libraries have made the observance a recurring tradition. In 2025, the libraries staged four separate opportunities for people to pick up a banned book and talk with a librarian about censorship. The 2026 giveaway at the Engineering Center follows that pattern, moving the table into a building not normally associated with literary debate — a fitting setting, perhaps, given that the books in question are the ones most often argued over.
The ALA is careful to note the limits of its own figures. Its Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles challenge data from reports filed by library professionals and from news coverage around the country, and because many challenges are never reported or written about, the published numbers represent only a snapshot of censorship nationwide. The real total, the association acknowledges, is likely higher.
For anyone who shows up on October 5, the takeaway is more tangible than a statistic. It is a book — one that someone, at some point, decided was too dangerous or too uncomfortable for a library shelf. The event runs from 10 a.m. to noon in the Engineering Center lobby, and the books are free while they last.