The return to library shelves of two controversially banned novels - Mark Twain's Eve's Diary and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five - marks the start of America's annual celebration of prohibited literature, Banned Books Week, on Saturday.

Twain's comic short story told from the perspective of Eve was banned from Charlton Library in Massachusetts in 1906 after its trustees objected to illustrations of a naked Eve - or as the New York Times put it at the time, "her dresses are all cut Garden of Eden style". When Richard Whitehead became a trustee of the library in 2008, he stumbled across the century-old controversy and decided to track down a copy of the banned book, complete with illustrations.

"Knowing that Banned Book Week was coming up in September [he] proposed the idea of having an official 'unbanning' of the book," said the library's director Cheryl Hansen. "On Tuesday, September 20, 2011 the board of library trustees unanimously voted to unban Eve's Diary. I think that Mark Twain would be very pleased and I'm sure that he would have something humorous to say about it." At the time, Twain wrote in a letter that "the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me".

School Library Journal:

But the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library says it is not really an unbanning. That's what the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is saying to a school board in southwest Missouri that voted on Monday to restore two books it banned from public schools, saying they were inappropriate and contrary to teachings in the Bible.

In a unanimous 6-0 vote, the Republic School Board decided to make Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer available to students for independent reading-but only if they're kept in a secure location of the school library and if parents or guardians check them out. Under a board policy adopted in July, teachers still can't make the books required reading or read them aloud in school.

In response, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library says it will continue to offer one free copy of Slaughterhouse Five to high school students in Republic, MO, since the vote still amounts to a book ban.

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library:

Due to the overwhelming response we have received from supporters, the KVML is putting our additional donations toward the creation of a banned book exhibit for the KVML and a Banned Book Response Team to help other communities when the hint of banned books arises. We'll share with them a toolkit for how to deal with the situation based on what we have learned from this situation. Many, many volunteers are stepping forward to help with this important cause.

And lest anyone think that the KVML is being parochial about KV:  

Sarah Ockler, author of the often-challenged title Twenty Boy Summer, will speak at The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, 340 N. Senate Ave., Indianapolis, on Tuesday, September 27, at noon. Ms. Ockler will discuss her book and censorship, specifically the recent book ban at a Republic, Missouri, high school that banned her book and Slaughterhouse-Five.