Cartoonist Tony Weaver Jr. named Honorary Chair for Banned Books Week 2026

The American Library Association has tapped cartoonist, educator, and founder of the social impact organization Weird Enough Productions, Tony Weaver Jr., to be one of four honorary chairs for Banned Books Week 2026, running October 4th through October 10th. The announcement, timed to the ALA's 150th anniversary, pairs Weaver with author Bess Kalb and youth honorary chairs Marshall Romero and Azeemah Sadiq, two Texas-based student advocates.

It's a fitting pick. Weaver's 2024 graphic memoir Weirdo, illustrated by twin sisters Jes and Cin Wibowo, chronicles his own childhood as a bullied, comics-obsessed Black kid navigating mental health struggles and the pressure to conform. The book landed on best-of-the-year lists from Kirkus, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the New York Public Library, and drew praise from Jason Reynolds and Jerry Craft—no small blurbs in middle-grade circles. Its unflinching handling of grief and self-harm has also made it exactly the kind of book that tends to land on challenge lists, which gives Weaver's new role real teeth rather than just optics.

Weaver isn't new to using comics as advocacy. Weird Enough leans on graphic-novel storytelling to build self-awareness and social responsibility in students, and he's the creator of the WEBTOON Original series The UnCommons. He was the first comics creator named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 in the Education category, and has built a TikTok following north of half a million using his platform to push back on harmful narratives in nerd-culture spaces.

Weaver's co-chair, Kalb is the Emmy-nominated Buffalo Fluffalo author and former Jimmy Kimmel Live! writer, who has her own free-speech credentials, having testified before the House Judiciary Committee against government censorship and book bans. Youth chairs Romero and Sadiq, both Texas-based advocates, also bring policy backgrounds: Romero has spoken out against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation at the Texas Legislature, while Sadiq—now a Stanford freshman—has worked with the U.S. Department of Education and helped introduce student-focused legislation back home. Past honorary chairs include Jason Reynolds (2021), George M. Johnson (2022), LeVar Burton (2023), Ava DuVernay (2024), and George Takei (2025), so Weaver's joining a fairly stacked lineage.

This year's theme, "Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read," comes with campaign artwork from illustrators Hyesu Lee, Loveis Wise, and Mikey Burton, developed with the branding firm Little Jacket. The timing isn't incidental: ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025 (just five short of the 2023 record) with 5,668 titles banned outright, the highest raw number and highest ban-rate the office has recorded since it started tracking in 1990. Nearly 92% of those challenges came from organized pressure groups and officials rather than individual parents, per ALA's data.

The ALA's rollout leans hard into its #LetBooksBe campaign messaging, with the org directing followers to ala.org/bbooks for programming details.