LAKELAND | To fight against censorship and to celebrate freedom, passages from some of America's most commonly banned books will be read aloud at the University of South Florida's Banned Books Week Read-Out event next week.

On Sept. 29, students, faculty and staff of USF Poly will read from some of the thousands of books that have been banned or challenged in America. The Read-Out, sponsored by the USF Poly Library, will take place outside the library from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Participants will read from their chosen books for 15 minutes each.

More than 500 books were challenged or banned across America in 2008, according to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, which collects data on banned books.

"There are still hundreds of challenges and people trying to ban books in the U.S., and the ones we know of are just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that about 85 percent of challenges are never reported," said Catherine Lavallee-Welch, the associate librarian at USF Poly.

The event, part of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week from Saturday to Oct. 3, is meant to bring attention to the dangers censorship presents.

"When you try to censor a book, you are restricting freedom of speech and individual freedom," Lavallee-Welch said.

Some of the most banned or challenged books include children's favorites such as the books from the Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyers, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman, Lavallee-Welch said.

"Sometimes people are very well-intentioned and just want to protect children, but if we start censoring now, it leads to something bigger later," Lavallee-Welch said.

The most banned book for the past two years has been the children's book "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, a book about two male penguins trying to adopt a penguin child.

Even literary classics are not immune to censorship.

At least 42 of the top 100 novels of the 20th century, as compiled by the Radcliffe Publishing Course, have been either challenged or banned at some point, according to the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The list includes Pulitzer prize-winning novels such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee and "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck.

"This is an important issue people don't realize is going on. It is so ingrained in America that we have freedom of speech but there are forces picking at that," Lavallee-Welch said.

The most prevalent reason people have challenged or banned books is because of sexually explicit content, followed by offensive language and content unsuitable for an age group, according to the ALA.

Polk County has seen its own amount of censoring in the past.

In June 1982, a Polk County School Board Book Review Committee voted to ban "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from the library at Lake Gibson High School. The 1969 novel follows a man as he becomes "unstuck in time" and relives moments of his life, including his days as a prisoner of war during World War II.

Proponents of the ban cited the "book's explicit sexual scenes, violence and obscene language," according to the ALA's Web site.

More than 27 years later, the book is still missing from the shelves at Lake Gibson High, said Jacqueline Rose, the senior coordinator of media library services at Polk County schools.

There is a policy the School Board goes through when a book is challenged that can either lead to a ban of the book at the particular school where the complaint was registered or a decision to keep the book on the shelf, she said.

There is also an appeals process available regardless of the decision.

As for Vonnegut's book at Lake Gibson High, "nobody has apparently said they wanted it back and so it hasn't been put back in there," Rose said.

[ Shelley Rossetter can be reached at 863-802-7516. ]