ELLENVILLE – The Harry Potter series, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you're wondering what these books and authors have in common, each has been attacked, respectively, as satanic, lewd, subversive, and racist. As such, each of these books and authors, along with many others, have been removed from library shelves, as well-meaning groups have attempted to keep children and young adults from being exposed to material they consider inappropriate.

But these attacks have led to a unique counter-offensive. From September 26 through October 3, the American Library Association (ALA) is hosting its 28th annual "Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read." This event, which has been observed since 1982, is an effort to educate the public about the importance of intellectual freedom, as well as to emphasize the need for a free society to adhere to its avowed creed of allowing freedom of expression — even if the ideas being expressed are unpopular or unorthodox.

Fortunately, here in the ridge area, there seem to be few, if any, instances in which a particular book has sparked the ire of the local community.

"I've never, in the 12 years I've been here, had someone say that we should remove a book," says Pam Stocking, Director of the Ellenville Public Library.

Stocking's observation about the local community appears to extend to New York State as a whole. According to the ALA website, between the years of 2007 and 2009 there have been just six instances in the Empire State in which a book has been attacked. These attacks have included teachers at a school in New Rochelle tearing-out objectionable pages from Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted, to members of the Brooklyn Library complaining about the ready availability, in the children's section, of Herge's Tintin au Congo, a 1930s-era, Belgian comic which depicts Africans as racist caricatures — in fact, the latter can now be accessed only by appointment.

But what it really comes down to is choice, according to Susan Mangan, the children's librarian at the Ellenville Public Library.

"There are home-schoolers who might say to their kids, 'this is why we're not taking that book out,' but no one has said that it shouldn't be on the shelf," Mangan says.

Public libraries, however, seem to be targeted less often than schools, according to Stocking and Mangan. In fact, of the six recent instances in which a book has been challenged in the State of New York, four involved school districts or libraries.

Denise Moore, who is the librarian for Ellenville High School, said that in 2001, shortly after she began her tenure at the facility, a local church group attempted to have removed from the library all of the Harry Potter books, citing the works' depiction of magic and wizardry as objectionable.

"Of course, the school board said, 'we don't do that; we don't ban books,'" Moore says.

Moore went on to say, however, that the school isn't interested in force-feeding a particular work if a student or a parent has a strong objection.

"Parents have the right to individually challenge a book," Moore says, "but for their own children, not somebody else's."

Sometimes these objections can be for entirely non-political, non-religious reasons, according to Madlyn Phelan, an English teacher at the high school. One student, several years ago, objected to having to read a war novel, an assignment Phelan usually gives to her 12th-graders.

"This student had a brother in Iraq, so it was too close to home for her," Phelan says.

Instead, this particular student was given several selections of non-war related fiction from which to choose.

All of the librarians and teachers interviewed for this article were quick to state that reading material, like most other things in life, really comes down to individual choice, and that the idea of suppressing a work is ultimately counterproductive.

Teenagers, on the other hand, sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about.

"[Students] don't understand why Cather in the Rye, or To Kill a Mockingbird, was banned," Phelan says about the current younger generation, many of whom are less judgmental than their parents.

Phelan also says that what may have been controversial several decades ago has now become part of American literary tradition. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, for example, is a book that has caused a certain amount of controversy over the years, but isn't really challenged any more.

And when it comes to books being challenged, the first thing librarians often ask a parent is, "did you read the book?" If the answer is "no," they usually recommend that the parent read the work and make note of specific examples of what they find problematic. The reason for this approach is that, too often, offending quotes are taken out of context. One of the librarians interviewed noted that there are a number of racy passages in the Bible — the "Song of Solomon" in particular, whose language describes the female anatomy in great detail, is one example of this.

Challenges to books, unfortunately, are likely to remain with us. In 2008 there were, nationwide, a total of 518 instances in which a book was challenged. The ALA, however, says that 70-to-80 percent of these challenges go unreported, so it is important for libraries and school districts to remain vigilant.

And while none of the public libraries in our area will be hosting any special events surrounding Banned Books Week, all residents are encouraged to make use of their library, whatever your taste and preference. The Ellenville High School Library, on the other hand, has a display of a number of challenged books for those students, and parents, who choose to review the canon of controversial literature.

After all, it's all about having the right to choose.