SALISBURY — Locals gathered on Main Street in Salisbury on Saturday to read books that have been banned from various schools throughout the United States.

Alissa Redmond, the owner of South Main Book Company, said she organized the banned book “read-out” as a way to bring attention to the growing national trend of books being banned by school systems. People who participated in the event could pick a book that has been banned in any school around the nation and read it outside of the store as a way to demonstrate the content that caused the book to be challenged.

“Because, sometimes those go very unsuspecting, under the ground, people don’t always hear about them. But there have been books that have been challenged in our community and the library system or in the school system. The reasons for why books have been challenged run the gamut,” said Redmond about challenges to books in the Rowan community.

The books are being banned in schools because supporters of the challenges say that they contain sexually explicit materials, graphic violence or offensive language, among other reasons. One book read on Saturday, “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White, was challenged in a Kansas school over 15 years ago because the talking animals were considered unnatural and blasphemous according to Redmond.

“I picked ‘Charlotte’s Web’ because virtually everybody that passes by has read ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and because it’s a book about acceptance and about love and about everybody having a role in life. And so I think to ban ‘Charlotte’s Web’ is really to point out how distinctly narrow you want your world to be,” said Whitney Peckman.

Several people stopped to speak to Peckman. She said that most of the people who stopped, including a father and his daughter, stopped because they saw someone reading a beloved childhood book and wanted to say how much they enjoyed it or know why she was reading it out loud.

Other books that were read included “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson and “Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto” by Michelle Bowdler.

“I’m here because I am horrified at the activity that’s going on around the country, particularly in schools, of books being banned. I mean, we’ve always had some books banned, it goes way back to the Puritans, but there generally was a focus about what made a book banned. Whereas now, it’s whatever one person feels upsets them or might upset their child,” said Nan Lund, who read “This Book is Gay.”

This is the second year Redmond has hosted the event. In 2022, Redmond said she came up with the idea after speaking with other independent booksellers about the issue of books being challenged and thinking about how she could raise awareness. Last year the “read-out” was held inside the store, but this year Redmond moved the event outdoors.

“I liked the idea of us not just being inside the walls of the bookstore speaking about this topic, but really being out in the community and spreading the word as much as we could from where we were standing. This is an issue that we feel passionate about and maybe you’re not going to come int he bookstore or maybe you’re not a reader, but you should still know that these books are being challenged and we stand on the side of the written word,” said Redmond.