University of California Riverside’s Palm Desert campus will begin its free “Lit Flicks” series Saturday featuring movie screenings based on banned or challenged young adult books.
The series will get underway at 1 p.m. Saturday with a screening of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” according to a statement from UCR’s Palm Desert Campus. Though the community series is free, attendees are encouraged to RSVP at palmdesert.ucr.edu/events-programs.
“As there has been a surge in book suppression and censorship across the country, we’ve decided to focus on banned or challenged young adult books,” college officials wrote in a statement. “During the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, PEN America’s index of school book bans lists 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles.”
Only being able to choose three books to be read and discussed for this year’s summer series, college officials also set on hosting screenings for “Of Mice and Men” on Aug. 26 and “The Kite Runner” on Sept. 16.
The series launched in 2012 with goals of digging into good writing, having a space to discuss books that have turned into movies and to offer educational programming in the desert during summer months, according to college officials.
“After more than a decade of Lit Flicks, this season the popular series is growing even more,” PDC officials wrote in a statement. “We’ve changed venues and will be hosting each event at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. This gives us more room to welcome a larger audience and get more of our Palm Springs friends involved.”