Banned Books Week 2012 begins tomorrow! We hope you will celebrate the freedom to read during the week to come by reading your favorite banned/challenged book. If you need ideas on what to read, check out the timeline of banned and challenged books. Today we feature the year 2004 and “King & King,” by Linda de Haan.

A children’s book about a prince whose true love turns out to be another prince, “King and King” faced intense scrutiny and criticism soon after its English publication in 2002 (it was originally written in Dutch). In 2004, the book was restricted to adults in a school’s library in Wilmington, NC. It was also moved from the children’s section to the adult section at the Shelbyville-Shelby County, IN Public Library because the book’s homosexual story was considered inappropriate by a parent. The following year, over seventy Oklahoma state legislators called for the book to be removed from the children’s section and placed in the adult section of the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma City, OK.

For more information about Banned Books Week, please visit www.ala.org/bbooks.