Ever since I was a little girl, I've had my nose stuck in a book. I've always been very fortunate to have amazing teachers, who helped foster and nurture that love of reading. It all started when my first-grade teacher saw how much I loved to read and knew I could handle a challenge, so he gifted me the box set of all 7 "Harry Potter" novels for Christmas. I went on to read them all before starting 2nd grade, and those books are some of my most prized possessions to this day. The "Harry Potter" books are among some of my favorites that have been banned in the past.
This love for reading has only continued to grow as I have because of my liberal arts education at Franklin and being involved with my sorority, Pi Beta Phi. The sorority’s philanthropic effort is Read > Lead > Achieve and our mission is to inspire “a lifelong love of reading that can unlock true potential, creating a more literate and productive society,” because one in four children grow up unable to read, and that’s one too many. Seeing the impact that we can have through raising money at our events and working with kids at the Boys & Girls Club or through the Johnson County Imagination Library was so inspiring and reinvigorating.
I want everyone to be able to find refuge, entertainment, or bliss in the pages of a book like I was able to. "Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world," Malala Yousafzi, Pakistani female education activist and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said. So when picking my topic for my senior project and the culmination of everything I've learned in college, I knew I wanted to choose something meaningful to me—and this was it. With this project, I was able to talk with so many people and conduct research to discover why book censorship has been on the rise and what others think about it and bring that information to you.