As many of you already know this week is ALA‘s annual Banned Books Week which seeks to increase awareness of the problem of censorship and to remind readers of their freedom to read. It has been celebrated every year since it’s launch in 1982. Since many bloggers have already said it better than I, here is a roundup of some of the interesting, funny, and insightful BBW posts around the blogosphere:

-Michelle at One Librarian’s Book Reviews makes the important distinction between banned books and challenged ones. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library has compiled a couple of different challenged book lists by age which you can look at here.

-Forever Young Adult is celebrating BBW all week long with more lighthearted posts such as a drinking game, banned book reports, and The True Story of How Banned Books Ruined Our Lives. Hilarious stuff.

-The children book review site Story Snoops has been featuring a daily BBW interview on the blog portion of their site with a blogger or author. Yesterday was Abby the Librarian, who has a lovely kitlit blog, and if you grew up with Judy Blume you’ll want to check out her interview as well.

-Steph Su Reads is hosting a Banned Books Reading Challenge. Although I’m not participating (yet) I think it’s a marvelous idea. Best of all it runs through October 15 so there’s still plenty of time to sign-up.

-And lastly as I can’t seem to get it out of my head (and have watched it several times over the past year) I leave you with John Green‘s brilliant and witty defense of his book Looking for Alaska which was challenged by New York’s Depew High School.