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Are Books Forbidden Fruit?

This research guide has information and resources on the topic of book banning and censorship.

Are Books Forbidden Fruit?

This year, Banned Books Week is October 5–11, 2025. 

As in the previous years, at Emory, we are organizing Banned Books Week events around the theme of apples, symbolizing forbidden fruit. How do you feel about books being challenged? Have you read books that have been banned since their publication? Do you know the reasons why books are banned and what are the different forms of challenging books in the U.S. and around the world?

Find the Forbidden Fruit bookmarks at the Service Desk in Woodruff Library and at our events and join us for the events organized as part of Banned Books Week 2025! 

  • Monday, October 6, 2025, Woodruff Library Lobby: Check out items from the Banned Books pop-up library
  • Wednesday, October 8, 2025, at 5:00 pm in the Jones room: Join us at Professor of German Peter Höyng's talk "Beethoven and Schubert in the Age of Vienna’s Censorship" and enjoy coffee almost as if in a Viennese coffee house on

Abstract: Habsburg Emperor Franz II/I (1792-1835) maintained his conservative ideology and agenda in response to the French Revolution first, and then against Napoleon. In doing so, he enforced policing and censorship of the public sector as much as resources permitted. The talk explores how these policies affected (even) composers such as Beethoven (1770–1827) and Schubert (1797–1828).

  • Thursday, October 9, at 5:00 pm in Woodruff Library's Room 314: Participate in and activity and discussion on challenged and most-read books while enjoying apples and apple-filled delicacies

This year's events

Past years events

Librarians at Emory introduced Banned Books Week programming titled "Are books forbidden fruit?" in 2023. During this first year, the activity focused on various books published since the Middle Ages, in Europe and the Americas to which access was denied by certain authorities. In 2024, the campus community could borrow items a from pop-up library of challenged books, passer byes could taste apples and apple-filled delicacies and test their knowledge of forbidden readings at our table at Asbury Circle, and participants in our activity in Woodruff Library looked at various texts that were censored, that is certain lines and words in a text were expunged, edited, or changed.