Each weekday from October 10th-14th I’ll be posting a photo from one of the amazing DC-area independent bookshops to highlight Banned Book Week 2026. Today we’ll travel to Takoma Park.
My go-to local independent bookshop is People’s Book in Takoma Park. A quick one-stop ride on the metro and a short walk through Takoma’s Main Street district takes me to the welcoming confines of a store with helpful, friendly, book-loving staffers. You can easily find most major releases plus one can always order any book which isn’t in stock. More importantly, People’s reflects the progressive sensibilities of the Washington area’s only nuclear free zone, and that outlook on life is evident on the bookshelves.
For their 2026 Banned Books Week promotion, People’s chose to use books that have been banned somewhere in the U.S. for their DC Books to Prisons promotion. I chose a copy of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys to buy and donate in my visit this week.
In thinking about Banned Books Week here in 2026, I can’t help but be reminded of the work the Nazi’s did in Germany before and during World War II to use books as weapons in the war on ideas. The U.S. Office of War Information commissioned a poster to fight back against the idea of banning books.
According to PEN America, the 2025-2026 school year includes many books and authors that have been repeatedly banned over the last five years.
“The most commonly banned book list for the 2025-2026 school year includes many notable repeat titles: Sold by Patricia McCormick; Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson; several titles by Ellen Hopkins like Crank and Identical; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; and Looking for Alaska by John Green.”
People’s Book is one of the 30 bookshops I’ve visited as part of my personal 2026 DC Independent Bookstore Crawl. To see the review that came out of the visit I made to the shop, check out Installment #2.
Here are the Banned Books Week photos I’ve posted to date:
- MONDAY: Solid State Books at National Airport (photo by Tom Mayes)
- TUESDAY: Old Town Books, Alexandria
- WEDNESDAY: Bards Alley, Vienna
Keep reading!
More to come . . .
DJB
Photo by Árpád Czapp on Unsplash
