Children's Books discussion
Banned Books: discussions, lists
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Discussion of censorship, equity, and other concerns.
After banning or relocated several books that parents complained about, Lake Travis Independent School District (TX) has now given parents the feature to restrict any books they’d like from their students.https://communityimpact.com/austin/la...
Parents in Lake Travis ISD may now restrict what their children read through the district’s online library catalog.
The parental control feature comes months after the board of trustees approved a new library policy recognizing a parent’s involvement in their student’s library selections.
Current situation
On Aug. 30, the district announced that parents may browse the library book collection at their child’s school, view their current checkouts and restrict access to specific materials through the district’s online library catalog, Follett Destiny.
Previously, parents had to contact their child’s school librarian to block a book title, said Amanda Prehn, LTISD director of curriculum and instruction, at a July 17 board of trustees meeting.
“By tailoring library access, we aim to create a learning environment that aligns with your family’s preferences,” Prehn said in a letter posted on the district’s website. “We encourage you to utilize these tools to foster meaningful discussions with your child about their library selections.”
In July, the district adopted a new library policy in alignment with House Bill 900—a state law that went into effect in September prohibiting s--ually explicit material in public schools.
The LTISD library policy bans “harmful” or “obscene” material that is “pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable,” recognizes a parent's role in their child's library choices, and revises the reconsideration process for challenged library books, according to previous Community Impact reporting.
Samuels Public Library Honored as Virginia Library of the YearThe Virginia Library Association (VLA) has named Samuels Public Library the 2024 Virginia Library of the Year.
Samuels Public Library has been a cornerstone of Warren County for over two centuries and is committed to providing public access to literature and learning.
One of the library’s most notable achievements this year was its dedication to upholding the First Amendment. In early 2023, a small but vocal group of 53 individuals from the community challenged over 300 books, primarily due to their LGBTQ content. The group also demanded changes to the library’s non-profit structure. The Warren County Board of Supervisors responded by withholding 75% of the library’s annual budget until a compromise was reached.
Despite these challenges, the library stood firm. It developed new policies, such as creating a “New Adult” collection, reviewing all Young Adult (YA) books, and introducing two new youth library cards with checkout restrictions. However, the library’s leadership, staff, and community members remained committed to defending their collection development policies and the First Amendment rights of all patrons.
“The library’s staff, Board of Trustees, Friends of the Samuels Public Library, and hundreds of community members came together to defend the library and its mission,” a library representative noted. “Samuels not only survived this contentious challenge but has thrived in its wake.”
Melody Hotek, President of the Samuels Public Library Board of Trustees, received the Trustee Library Award for her leadership and dedication. Hotek has worked with nonprofits and served on boards for 25 years, including six years as the President of FOSL. She has been the driving force behind the library’s annual fundraising event, “A Taste for Books,” which raises an average of $20,000 each year.
Hotek was also a key figure during the recent censorship challenges. She worked closely with the Warren County Board of Supervisors, library directors, and community members to ensure funding while upholding the integrity of the library’s collection.
“Melody did not shy away from the challenge,” the VLA stated. “She advised the County Board of Supervisors that the library would close its doors before it violated the First Amendment rights of the community.”
Low circulation is BS. How do they know the kids aren't reading the books in the library?Note how many times s-e-x appears in this story. Who has the inappropriate preoccupation exactly? Teens or adults?
Texas
Conroe ISD banned certain books. Now it may revise the policy to put them back in classrooms
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neig...
Conroe ISD trustees are considering possible changes to the district book policy that would allow the process to remove books be used to return those banned books to classrooms and libraries.
However, some board members say it will create a path for inappropriate books to make it back to school campuses.
In November, the board updated its book removal policy to include the definition of “s--ually explicit material” to comply with House Bill 900, which requires school library booksellers to identify books, including those written for teens, that are “s--ually explicit” or “s--ually relevant,” and those books rated “s--ually explicit” would be banned from schools.
Since January 2023, Conroe ISD officials have removed 120 titles from school libraries based on the district's previous and current policy regarding library materials. Of those 120 titles, 24 were due to low circulation.
Concern that the new policy was overreaching came to light in June after the board banned 19 books from classroom instruction. The board upheld a decision made by a committee of district educators that removed the books, including “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker and “I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” by Erika L. Sanchez, from classrooms.
While the board upheld that action, several trustees agreed the policy has created gaps causing “unintended consequences” putting some students disadvantage since some Advance[d] Placement exams included those books.
Trustees Misty Odenweller, Tiffany Nelson and Melissa Dungan did not support the changes.
“Not one person has been able to say that learning outcomes have been impacted negatively and that the ability for students to perform successfully on exams has been hindered,” Odenweller said. “It is quite clear (these changes) aren’t a desire to improve the education outcomes but it is a rewrite of a policy for a progressive outcome.”
Odenweller called the changes “absurd and disingenuous.”
Board President Skeeter Hubert said the changes to the policy do not create an avenue for inappropriate books to be put back in classrooms or libraries but instead allow parents more choice on what their children have access to and allows for books that have been removed to be reconsidered.
The board will revisit the changes at its October meeting.
More books returning to shelves, this one from FloridaRepeat after me... penguins... true story... not p_____y!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergre...
Facing a federal lawsuit over their removal of 36 books from schools, the Nassau County School District reached a settlement agreement to return the books to library shelves.
The bad guys:
Citizens Defending Freedom was founded as County Citizens Defending Freedom in 2021. Jack Jenkins at Religion News Service reported that the inspiration came from hearing Rand Paul speak to a group of faith and business leaders meeting at Mar-a-Lago [You know who lives there] The group also has names ties to other conservative groups, particularly the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative group that has exercised considerable influence in opposing LGTBQ rights and abortion.
Founder Steve Maxwell is the CEO of a company that makes produce packaging, and most of the visible members of CDF are also Christian businessmen. One critic called them “Moms for Liberty in suits.”
It's Banned Books Week so expect the stories to have a positive slant until closer to the election when all heck breaks loose again.Wow none of these books are expected and they all sound shocking, aside from the French novel which is pretty much what you'd expect from a novel of that period. Interesting thought process and I'm not sure I agree with putting these books on display but they certainly should be referenced in some sort of bibliography "Guide to understand extremism".
San Diego
Board of Supervisors votes for unsupervised reading
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2...
Last week, the County Board of Supervisors voted to have all 33 county libraries carry nationally recognized “challenged and banned” books, and to have them on display at those libraries during Banned Book Week, which begins September 22. Today, Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who proposed the policy, gave the media a sneak peak at the five books chosen for most prominent display, and also issued the following statement, explaining the selections.
PaywalledBrevard Schools halts book committee — on eve of Banned Books Week
Florida Today
https://www.floridatoday.com › news › 2024/09/23 › b...
The book review committee was halted because it no longer has enough members to continue.
Florida county restoring dozens of books to school libraries after 'book ban' lawsuit https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09...
Same story, different source
Sad and scaryThe right wing doesn’t need to ban books anymore. Now, schools are censoring themselves.
https://slate.com/life/2024/09/banned...
The Chilling Effect Is Real
Educators’ stories about preemptive book bans show how schools are censoring themselves.
Mary, a high school English teacher of 20 years, has dealt with her share of parental objections toward books. From the mother who worried The Crucible contained witchcraft to the father who questioned Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because Wilde was gay, Mary has practiced explaining, advocating for, and negotiating her book selections over the decades. “Almost every English teacher will encounter parental complaints about a text choice at some point,” Mary described to me. “They are sometimes frustrating, but they are not typically difficult to handle.”
They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over.
Mary’s school board greeted teachers back to work this year with a list of seven novels up for removal. This is simply business as usual in many districts. She plans to testify before her board but expects that one of her favorite books to teach, Beloved, will be cut. Without an appeals process, there will be nothing she can do. The book “will be gone forever” from her classroom library, thanks, as she sees it, to “a lot of power in the hands of a few board members.”
...
“Parental rights” has become a major rallying call for conservatives, but in many cases, parents have little to do with the process.
The dynamic has left teachers feeling vulnerable. To prevent conflict, they are self-censoring, well beyond the most controversial books. Some avoid literary works found in their textbooks because they fear class conversations about anything related to social politics. Those fears are well-founded. Mary’s principal reprimanded her colleague for teaching Sherman Alexie poems anthologized in her district-approved textbook. Another elected not to teach Martin Luther King Jr.’s classic “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” convinced she would be unable to respond freely to student comments in class.
Schools are censoring themselves. Even in states that lack divisive concepts laws regulating the teaching of so-called CRT, over half of teachers still report censoring themselves. Weak leadership and lack of administrative support—not parental or community activism—are the No. 1 reason teachers cite for altering, limiting, or otherwise censoring their instruction.
Weakness does not equal passivity. In the high school where Laura served as librarian for almost 20 years, two principals refused to remove the graphic edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from the school’s library at a single parent’s request. Once district leaders became involved, the book and both principals were gone. Soon, the school’s librarians were ordered to pull 169 other books—the library’s entire LGBTQ+ collection—from the shelves. Laura recalls that a district official declared, “Moms for Liberty have the guns. We’re simply taking away their bullets.”
Likening censorship to gun violence, particularly in the context of schools, makes for an unfortunate choice of metaphor. But it offers a window into how school leaders understand their own exertion of power, making choices that far too often seem to become as unilateral, destructive, and antidemocratic as the forces they purport to be protecting students and schools from.
...
Mahalia was the first Black librarian to be hired at her private school. When a white teacher colleague assigned her class to read Angie Thomas’ YA novel about police violence, The Hate U Give, and asked Mahalia to moderate the panel discussion, she agreed. Yet when just one parent complained that the school had taught an “anti-police novel,” it was Mahalia—and her library collection—that suffered the blame. Mahalia remembers her administration beginning to monitor her closely. “From then on,” she says, “my collection was analyzed and every programming idea or event I enacted for the student body was under high scrutiny.” More than once, she says, her principal demanded books be pulled from library shelves and put in a desk drawer.
The twinned stories of racial and administrative aggression toward Mahalia began, in her words, with the fact that “a lot of the books on [her principal’s] list were by and for people like me.” In her principal’s pinpointed attempts to censure Mahalia personally, her story is unique from Mary’s and Laura’s. But like them, she began to feel adrift in her school community as her principal’s demands grew and the collection policies and procedures that should have guided the school’s responses were ignored.
...
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Mary, a high school English teacher of 20 years, has dealt with her share of parental objections toward books. From the mother who worried The Crucible contained witchcraft to the father who questioned Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray because Wilde was gay, Mary has practiced explaining, advocating for, and negotiating her book selections over the decades. “Almost every English teacher will encounter parental complaints about a text choice at some point,” Mary described to me. “They are sometimes frustrating, but they are not typically difficult to handle.”
They are also nothing like what many teachers today are up against, and not just in red states. The media spectacles that have been documented in school board meetings—and the countless quieter yet equally high-pressure scenes the public never sees—are far from over. In the course of working on a book, Teaching in a Time of Book Bans: Lessons From Teachers and Librarians, I interviewed school faculty from across the country about their recent experiences with censorship. For the majority, the problem comes from inside the institutions where they work.
Mary’s school board greeted teachers back to work this year with a list of seven novels up for removal. This is simply business as usual in many districts. She plans to testify before her board but expects that one of her favorite books to teach, Beloved, will be cut. Without an appeals process, there will be nothing she can do. The book “will be gone forever” from her classroom library, thanks, as she sees it, to “a lot of power in the hands of a few board members.”
Mary teaches in an American high school, but like the other educators in this story, she asked me not to identify her because she fears retribution from her school or district administrator. As her story suggests, it is not just the unprecedented number of book challenges over the past four years that has been so difficult, but the fact that the process and stakes have changed completely. Forty-one percent of book challenges in 2022 stemmed directly from school board and district administrators. “Parental rights” has become a major rallying call for conservatives, but in many cases, parents have little to do with the process.
The dynamic has left teachers feeling vulnerable. To prevent conflict, they are self-censoring, well beyond the most controversial books. Some avoid literary works found in their textbooks because they fear class conversations about anything related to social politics. Those fears are well-founded. Mary’s principal reprimanded her colleague for teaching Sherman Alexie poems anthologized in her district-approved textbook. Another elected not to teach Martin Luther King Jr.’s classic “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” convinced she would be unable to respond freely to student comments in class.
Mary’s experiences provide texture to trends that big data is starting to show: Schools are censoring themselves. Even in states that lack divisive concepts laws regulating the teaching of so-called CRT, over half of teachers still report censoring themselves. Weak leadership and lack of administrative support—not parental or community activism—are the No. 1 reason teachers cite for altering, limiting, or otherwise censoring their instruction.
Weakness does not equal passivity. In the high school where Laura served as librarian for almost 20 years, two principals refused to remove the graphic edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from the school’s library at a single parent’s request. Once district leaders became involved, the book and both principals were gone. Soon, the school’s librarians were ordered to pull 169 other books—the library’s entire LGBTQ+ collection—from the shelves. Laura recalls that a district official declared, “Moms for Liberty have the guns. We’re simply taking away their bullets.”
Likening censorship to gun violence, particularly in the context of schools, makes for an unfortunate choice of metaphor. But it offers a window into how school leaders understand their own exertion of power, making choices that far too often seem to become as unilateral, destructive, and antidemocratic as the forces they purport to be protecting students and schools from.
In many ways, public schools are now operating like private schools historically have, easily beholden to their greatest donors. One of the most striking comparisons between the two is how similarly disenfranchised faculty can feel in both. Mahalia was the first Black librarian to be hired at her private school. When a white teacher colleague assigned her class to read Angie Thomas’ YA novel about police violence, The Hate U Give, and asked Mahalia to moderate the panel discussion, she agreed. Yet when just one parent complained that the school had taught an “anti-police novel,” it was Mahalia—and her library collection—that suffered the blame. Mahalia remembers her administration beginning to monitor her closely. “From then on,” she says, “my collection was analyzed and every programming idea or event I enacted for the student body was under high scrutiny.” More than once, she says, her principal demanded books be pulled from library shelves and put in a desk drawer.
The twinned stories of racial and administrative aggression toward Mahalia began, in her words, with the fact that “a lot of the books on [her principal’s] list were by and for people like me.” In her principal’s pinpointed attempts to censure Mahalia personally, her story is unique from Mary’s and Laura’s. But like them, she began to feel adrift in her school community as her principal’s demands grew and the collection policies and procedures that should have guided the school’s responses were ignored.
Schools are suffering for this now common neglect of democratic practice, starting with a hollowed-out curriculum and teacher burnout and disillusionment. Nationally, 82 percent of teachers believe conditions in K–12 education have grown worse in the past five years. Most see political climate as the primary cause. Nearly one-third of all teachers surveyed in a recent Pew report say they have considered looking for another job. But before we lose the actual people, we are already losing their expertise.
US public schools banned 10,000 books in most recent academic yearhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
The survey from PEN America suggested that bans of books nearly tripled nationwide, from 3,362 the previous year.
At least 13 titles were banned for the first time
approximately 8,000 instances of book bans took place in Florida and Iowa, as both states enforced sweeping laws targeting classroom material.
“State legislation was also particularly critical in accelerating book bans, making it easier to remove books from schools without due process, or in some cases, without any formal process whatsoever,” PEN America said.
Banned Books Week starts with mixed messages as reports show challenges both up and downhttps://apnews.com/article/banned-boo...
The American Library Association found a substantial drop in 2024 so far in complaints about books stocked in public, school and academic libraries, and in the number of books receiving objections. Meanwhile, PEN America is documenting an explosion in books being removed from school shelves in 2023-24, tripling to more than 10,000 over the previous year. More than 8,000 were pulled just in Florida and Iowa, where laws restricting the content of books have been passed.
The two surveys don’t necessarily contradict each other.
The library association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has recorded 414 challenges over the first eight months of 2024, with 1,128 different titles criticized. Over the same time period last year, the office tallied 695 cases, involving 1,915 books. The ALA relies on media accounts and reports from librarians and has long acknowledged that many challenges may not be included, whether because librarians preemptively withhold a book that may be controversial or decline to even acquire it.
The library association defines a “challenge” as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” The ALA doesn’t keep a precise figure of how many books have actually been withdrawn.
According to PEN, bans are tallied through local media reports, “school district websites, and school board minutes, as well as organizational partners” such as the Florida Freedom to Read Project and Let Utah Read. The library association relies primarily on local media and accounts from public librarians. And the two organizations have differing definitions of “ban,” a key reason their numbers vary so greatly. For the ALA, a ban is the permanent removal of a book from a library’s collection. Should hundreds of books be pulled from a library for review, then returned, they are not counted as banned, but listed as a single “challenge.”
For PEN, withdrawals of any length qualify as bans.
Amanda Jones is busy with a book tour. I'm reading her book and she's preaching to the choir! I know all this but it's chilling hearing how the censors' threats made her feel. Vilified librarian meets with Kansas City readers to discuss new book on book-banning
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local...
The war on books that has taken over Livingston Parish (La.) has dwindled down to one sore spot: a shelf.https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rou...
For more than two years, the parish has been embroiled in debate over what some call inappropriate books for children. No books have been removed from libraries, but there have been frozen library cards, social media callouts and book removal attempts. And the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control has seen some of its members pushed out and replaced.
The latest development is a debate over the location of the new “Parenting Shelf.” The shelf, created by the board of control, holds books that are a combination of juvenile nonfiction and fiction that cover topics such as sexual education, drug abuse, grief, mental health, racism, puberty and more. The library staff, not the board, decides what goes on the shelf.
A meeting Tuesday night became tense when the discussion turned to the parenting shelf. Board member Larry Davis wanted to move it outside the children’s area to a neutral location near the front desk.
“We received a lot of good feedback from what I was looking at. Everybody loves the shelf," he said. "The main thing that the parents called me about is that the books are at eye level, which is what we did not want."
Davis said he was concerned about the possibility of a child roaming the area and grabbing a book that covers a sensitive topic.
Fellow member Dewanna Christian agreed that the shelf needs extra attention or precaution.
“What is the point of putting it on the shelf, if no one’s policing the shelf,” she asked.
But moving the shelf isn’t as straightforward as one may think.
Parish Attorney Brad Cascio advised the board in July that relocating books can face the same scrutiny as removing books.
“I would just warn you to be careful when relocating a book. Like I said, it’s going to be looked at the motivation for relocating it, where you’re relocating it, and it’s going to be looked at just as tightly and just as closely as if you took it off the shelves completely,” he wrote to the board.
Some don't like the idea of the shelf at all.
Elise Leblanc, a Denham Springs retired English teacher, thinks the shelf defeats its own purpose. She said now all the books some people are worried about are in one central location.
Currently, there is only one book under review on the parenting shelf: “Fire Safety” by Emma Bassier. Public records show a patron wanted the book to be placed back in the general children's section.
Cascio, the attorney, has previously said that books that are not clearly for children can easily be moved outside the children's area — but books that are meant for children should be placed in that section.
In July, Tulane University Law Clinic wrote to the board: “The potential policy of relocating challenged works pending review violates the Constitution because it removes protected works from the shelves... Federal courts have held that stigmatizing controversial books by relocating or removing them from circulation is a First Amendment violation.”
The rest of the board — and the public — was split on the idea of moving the shelf or giving it extra attention.
During public comment, board member Abby Crosby told the room it breaks her heart to “know that some of these children might stumble across something and they might think that it's OK.”
Watson resident Mandy Pickering said she wasn’t originally in support of the shelf but believes the Watson branch has done a wonderful job with it. She even said during public comment that her friend in Ascension Parish wishes their libraries had something similar.
Pickering is against moving the shelf out of the children’s section, however, due to the possibility of it being unconstitutional. She and several other attendees said children 13 and under must be accompanied by an adult in the library, so parents should be able to steer their kids away from the shelf if they wanted to.
Jordan Gonzalez, a Denham Springs resident, said it’s important to learn and have conversations about the topics on the shelf, rather than shy away from them. He pointed out that there's an age restriction on checking out books, so children will only be looking at books briefly.
"If my daughter is old enough to recognize a vagina on this page — ‘Daddy, what is this vagina?’ — then she's old enough to learn what that is,” Gonzalez said.
Public commenters, including District 7 council member Ricky Goff asked if they could just raise the height of the shelf if it being eye-level is the issue. Board member Shalisha Labat said the parenting shelf is in the taller stacks of the juvenile section.
The controversy over books Livingston kicked off when library board member Erin Sandefur, who is now a parish council member, shared she wanted to ban or restrict books about gender identity and an LGBTQ guide for teens.
For some in Livingston, the fact that there is so much controversy over a single shelf shows how people trying to ban books won't take no for an answer.
“There was a community post saying it was a great idea, now it’s not good enough, now it needs to be moved,” said Amanda Jones, a Livingston Parish school librarian whose opposition to attempts to remove books got her national attention.
Jones said the parental shelf is not a problem “as long as the books aren’t all a catch-all for LGBTQ+ themes.”
The debate has not been settled. The board majority voted to table the parenting shelf discussion until Nov. 19 — extending the shelf life of Livingston’s book control conversation.
And here's what real censorship looks like from the government. We must be careful not to allow this to happen in the free English-speaking world. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/chin...
China’s Communist Party is clamping down on the secret hobby of some high-ranking officials: reading banned books, a series of state media reports suggest.
Officials ... have been accused in recent months of "privately possessing and reading banned books and periodicals," according to state media reports, which typically surface when the officials are probed by the party’s disciplinary arm.
Senior officials have traditionally enjoyed privileged access to materials banned as potentially subversive for the wider population, via the "neibu," or internal, publishing system, former Communist Party officials told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
Now it appears that President Xi Jinping is coming for their personal libraries and private browsing habits in a bid to instill the same ideas in all party members regardless of rank.
Books banned since 2000 have typically been works about recent Chinese history or inside scoops on senior leaders, including memoirs from Mao Zedong's personal physician, late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang and a book about the later years of Mao's trusted premier Zhou Enlai.
Overseas publications are often banned or tightly controlled in China, either online, or via a complex process of political vetting by the authorities, including a 2017 requirement that anyone selling foreign publications in China must have a special license.
Former Party School professor Cai Xia said officials were generally allowed to read whatever they liked until the turn of the century. The arrangement encouraged officials to broaden their perspective, making them better leaders.
"Because experience shows that the more single-minded and closed-off the thinking of the Communist Party, especially the senior cadres, the narrower their vision and the poorer their thinking, and the harder it is for them to grasp the complex phenomena and situations that have emerged in China's rapid development,” she told Radio Free Asia.
Wider reading encourages deeper thought, which helps China "to move forward," she said.
Du Wen, former executive director of the Legal Advisory Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, said the purge of readers of banned publications is worrying.
"This phenomenon is so scary, because it sends the message that there is no independence in the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party," Du said. "Even dialectical materialism and critical thinking have become evidence of guilt."
Nearly 20 officials have been accused of similar infractions, Du said, basing the number on his observation of media reports.
Officials have been tight-lipped about the names of the books and periodicals these officials were reading, yet the accusations keep coming.
In November 2023, the party launched a probe into former Zhejiang provincial Vice Gov. Zhu Congjiu, accusing him of losing his way ideologically.
In addition to making off-message comments in public, Zhu had "privately brought banned books into the country and read them over a long period of time," according to media reports at the time.
In June 2023, the Beijing branch of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection expelled former state assets supervisory official Zhang Guilin for “possessing and reading books and periodicals with serious political issues..."
Many of those targeted have been in the state-controlled financial system, while some have been concentrated in the central province of Hunan and the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, according to political commentator Yu Jie.
"Interestingly, a lot of officials in the political and legal system, national security and prison systems, which are responsible for maintaining stability and persecuting dissidents, are also keen on reading banned books," Yu wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the case of former state security police political commissar Li Bin.
In Hubei province, the commission went after one of their own in party secretary Wang Baoping, accusing him of "buying and reading books that distorted and attacked the 18th Party Congress."
"Monitoring what people are reading shows the authoritarian system’s determination and ability to maintain its power and to destroy any resources that could be subversive and any doubts about the legitimacy of the authorities’ rule," Yu wrote in a Chinese-language commentary on May 28.
"Xi Jinping's ... goal is to turn more than 80 million party members into marionettes or zombies, and follow him, like the Pied Piper, in a mighty procession that leads to hell," he said. [Sounds a lot like Florida Gov. DeSantis]
Zhang Huiqing, a former editor at the People's Publishing House, told RFA Mandarin that "gray" books were allowed to be published under the watchful eye of the party's Central Propaganda Department, which also reviewed and vetted foreign-published books for translation into Chinese, for distribution as "neibu" reading material.
Divided into categories A, B and C, where A was restricted to the smallest number of officials, "reactionary" books were those that could potentially cause people to challenge the party leadership, and they were once distributed in a highly controlled manner, Zhang said.
[R]cent changes to party disciplinary regulations have brought more publications into the danger zone.
Nowadays, any publication not entirely in line with orthodox Marxism-Leninism or the official view of Communist Party history is likely to be seen as "reactionary," as is any information about China's highest-ranking leaders, both past and present, according to a senior figure in the Chinese publishing industry who spoke to RFA Mandarin on condition of anonymity.
"There's a lot of randomness and contingency that affects whether something winds up being labeled as reactionary," the person said. "It also depends on the level of understanding and personal ambition of the person in charge of an investigation."
And times change, making it hard for officials to stay on the right side of the rules.
"A book that was reactionary yesterday may not be reactionary today, and vice versa," the person said.
Typically, Chinese publishing houses take direct instructions from the General Administration of Press and Publication and its provincial branches about what they can and can't publish.
But a public hotline and a highly cautious attitude in recent years has meant that a book can be banned on the basis of a single phone call from a concerned individual. [This is happening in the U.S. already]
The senior publishing industry figure said one work of non-fiction was canned on the say-so of the widow of a senior cadre because she didn't like the way her late husband was portrayed. The man had only played a minor role in the book.
The Chinese Communist Party's internal rule-book entry on what constitutes a banned book offense has been amended three times since 2015, with categories being added each time.
Article 47 of the original regulations issued in 2003 warn: "Anyone who brings reactionary books, audio-visual products, electronic reading materials and so on into the country from abroad shall be criticized and educated; if the circumstances are serious, they will be given a warning or a serious warning; more serious offenses will be disciplined by removal from party post, probation or expulsion from the party."
Since 2015, the rules have been updated three times to include anyone "reading privately, browsing or listening" to banned material, which now includes "online text, images and audiovisual material."
Another senior media figure who requested anonymity said the key factor that makes a book reactionary these days is whether or not it tells the truth, especially about the Chinese government.
"Actually, the most reactionary thing is the truth," the person said, "because the truth could shake the foundations of party rule."
PEN America's initial book ban report for 2023-2024 school year is in.PEN America’s preliminary findings show that, for the 2023-2024 school year, book bans are already more than double what they were last year. There were more than 10,000 instances of school book bans, up from last school year’s 3,362. Eight thousand of them come from Florida and Iowa because of state laws, and a lot of the increase comes from an enhanced focus on s--ual content of any kind — which includes romance books, books about women’s sexuality, and books about s--al assault. Meanwhile, the focus on banning books about racism and LGBTQ+ characters remains.
https://pen.org/memo-on-school-book-b...
ALA's findings are a little different. From January 1 to August 31, 2024, they count only 1,128 unique titles being challenged. Last year, unique challenges within the same time period amounted to 1,915. They do note that regardless of the difference in unique challenges, documented attempts of book banning are way higher than they were in 2020, and, like PEN America, they state the very real threat of soft censorship.
The ALA is looking at unique titles being challenged, while PEN America is looking at total challenges.
Little v. Llano County case drags on.https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
At an appeal hearing this week in a closely watched book banning case, lawyers for rural Llano County, Tex., told the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that it should strike down a three-decade-old precedent and hand politicians near total authority over what books can go on—or be banned from—public library shelves.
The September 24 oral argument is the latest twist in Little v. Llano County. First filed in April 2022 by seven Llano County residents, the suit alleges that Llano County officials improperly removed some 17 books from library shelves because they disapproved of the content.
IndianaHoosiers challenged these 346 books at Indiana libraries last year.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/p...
Indiana, according to an updated ALA report, had 23 such cases targeting hundreds of books last year in the Hoosier state, an ALA spokesperson said in a message to IndyStar.
In 2023, Hoosiers challenged 346 books in libraries across Indiana, according to the ALA — from Maia Kobabe's "Gender Queer: A Memoir" to the Holy Bible.
IndyStar has provided a full list of challenged books toward the bottom of this article.
Targeted novels include those written by Indianapolis authors such as John Green and Kurt Vonnegut. The majority of challenges, however, were directed toward books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters, as well as books featuring people of color.
Restricting a book means librarians might relocate it to a section of the library intended for an older age group than the book is intended for, according to the ALA. In some cases this can mean requiring parental permission to check it out.
A book is banned, writes the ALA, when it's removed from a library collection entirely.
Soft’ book bans and the aftermath of record-breaking censorshiphttps://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-n...
What the reports do not quantify is the collateral damage of book bans, or so-called soft censorship, when a title is excluded, removed or limited before it is explicitly banned, out of fear of backlash. This could look like the removal of books due to complaints from parents or a librarian declining to carry a title out of concern about an impending ban or challenge. According to the ALA, surveys indicate 82%-97% of book challenges go unreported and receive no media coverage.
Dr. Seema Yasmin, an author and physician, said her debut book — “The ABCs of Queer History,” a children’s book published in April by the Hachette imprint Workman Publishing Co. — was soft-banned earlier this year. She said a big-box retailer, which she declined to name, canceled a large order of the book before it was even published, saying it was pulling back on Pride celebrations.
“What I expected was more of, ‘A parent in Dallas County has said they don’t want the book taught in their school.’ I did not expect a huge corporation to order and then rescind a 10,000-copy order, which is a whole print run. I didn’t see that happening.”
Yasmin joined the American Civil Liberties Union last week in Georgia for its “Know Your Rights Bus Tour.” She brought “The ABCs of Queer History” and her new book, “Unbecoming,” a young-adult novel published by Simon & Schuster about two Muslim teens in Texas fighting for abortion access. Yasmin said she began writing the book in 2019 after thinking about how abortion bans affect teenagers.
While teachers and librarians have praised her latest book, Yasmin said, some have told her they are not going to teach it or keep it in the classroom because they fear it’s going to get banned. “So what we’re seeing is this censorship happening before the book is banned because of the draconian ecosystem that we’re living in,” she said.
Teachers and librarians may face a variety of punishments if they are found providing a book that is challenged or banned, or, in some cases, if they share a book that is likely to be challenged. Depending on the state, it can be unclear how to comply.
In Florida last year, two school districts told teachers to conceal or remove every book while texts went under review for compatibility with a new state law. And in Utah, a recently introduced bill proposes teachers be charged with a misdemeanor if they keep materials available to students that have been classified as “objectively sensitive.”
This week, George M. Johnson, who uses they/them pronouns, released their latest book, “Flamboyants,” a collection of essays about Black and queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance. Its release during Banned Books Week was a coincidence, though Johnson acknowledges the book will likely be banned at some point.
Johnson is a plaintiff in PEN America et al. v. Escambia County School District, a federal lawsuit alleging school administrators in the Florida county are in violation of the First and 14th Amendments because the district’s book bans violate a right to free speech and equal protection under the law.
Johnson said they joined the lawsuit to show “how serious I’m taking this and how serious I am about the protection of young people and their ability to learn about their identity.” Johnson said it was also their experience having their work banned that inspired them to take action. “I was like, OK, if they want to go this far, I have to take it a step further myself.”
Next year, Johnson will release a book co-written with author Leah Johnson (no relation), whose books center queer girls of color. One of her young adult novels, “You Should See Me in a Crown,” was placed under review by the Oklahoma attorney general in 2022 to determine if the book violated the state’s obscenity law.
AlabamaThat stuff isn't IN the library to begin with! The librarians can't and wouldn't order it anyway.
Huntsville-Madison library system changes policy to meet APLS code
https://www.alreporter.com/2024/09/26...
The new policy prohibits the library from purchasing materials that are s---ally explicit, obscene or inappropriate for minors if they are marketed toward juveniles under the age of 18.
The new selection criteria policy follows the lead of the Ozark-Dale County Public Library by defining “inappropriate for minors” by using the state definition of “harmful to minors,” which currently only applies to s---ally explicit books.
House Bill 4, a bill that could allow librarians to be charged with a misdemeanor for having certain books on the shelf, also seeks to expand that definition to potentially include some materials and performances that blur gender lines.
Following the requirements of the Alabama Public Library Service, the library lists exemptions for age-appropriate materials regarding religion, history, biology or human anatomy.
The new policies also include changes to the library’s “young reader” cards, setting up there different levels of access that must be approved by a parent.
All juveniles 17 and under must have a young reader card in order to check out books for themselves.
The policy changes come after the board had mulled the possibility of simply forfeiting state aid—only necessary if the board could not find a way to meet the requirements that still served the community in a way they felt effective.
One of the few library systems in the state operating on a multi-million dollar budget, HMCPL is one of the few systems that could have considered that option without sacrificing key functions of the library.
Still, the $500,000 annual state allocation represents 6 percent of the library system’s overall budget and disproportionately represents up to 26 percent of the budgets of the system’s smallest libraries.
“From a governance perspective, we just have to do this,” board member Melissa Thompson told other board members.
Board members had expressed concern previously about the state aid requirements language and how it might affect the ability of patrons to access needed material. One example given was of a college student from out-of-state that needed to check out a book technically recommended for older teens. Would they need an adult present to allow that?
Under the approved policies, that situation would not be a problem, and any parent who wants their children to have free access to the library can approve so. The policies don’t appear facially to require the movement of LGBTQ+ books.
FloridaCitizens for Truth and Justice in Education, Fern & Fable celebrate Banned Books Week
https://www.news-journalonline.com/st...
CTJE leaders – Laurel Robinson, Sheila Zinkerman and Jane Breslin – did just that by giving away copies of banned books, sharing resources on protecting the right to read and highlighting student initiatives like “Break the Tape,” which is spearheaded by the Golden State Readers and encourages students to decorate their backpacks and books in yellow caution tape to raise awareness about banned books.
“The people that are shouting to their removal have not read them cover to cover,” Robinson said. “It’s easy to pick out salacious sentences and if you read the book cover to cover and used your own brain and experience … you’d find out a whole lot.”
CTJE is a local, grassroots organization striving for equal, free access to age-appropriate educational materials in public schools. Its leaders have been vocal at Volusia County School Board meetings, advocating for the right to read age-appropriate books in schools.
Since opening on Granada Boulevard in December 2023, Fern & Fable has featured a banned books section. Additionally, beginning in June, the store has offered a sponsorship program that allows individuals to buy books wholesale and give them away to people through a book library at the store.
“If these books can be a light or a voice for one person that may be struggling, I feel like that is well worth it,” Dunlop said. “Words have power and we need freedom of expression and freedom to read.”
Texas- Book bans and book challenges are really detrimental' | Austin authors on protecting books during Banned Books Weekhttps://www.kvue.com/article/news/com...
The Austin Public Library Foundation hopes by making sure people have a way to read these books, they can find representation and learn from new perspectives.
The Austin Public Library Foundation and local authors are taking steps to recognize books that some people may have restricted access to as part of Banned Books Week.
Representatives from the foundation say it's important to celebrate the freedom to read and access to information. They hope by making sure people have a way to read these books, those readers can find representation and learn from new perspectives.
"One of the most magical things about books is that they are gateways to empathy and to understanding and to connection," said Evan Griffith, an Austin children's book author. "Book bans and book challenges are really detrimental for an author's livelihood."
Griffith is also a member of Authors Against Book Bans and said it's important to uplift writers whose work is being blocked.
"I think it does a great disservice to all kids when they don't see the reality of their world or the diversity of their world reflected in the literature that they have access to," Griffith said.
Fellow Austin children's author Liz Garton Scanlon agrees.
"The argument that banning books protects them [the children] really flies in the face of what we know that access to books does, which is help kids understand the world," Garton Scanlon said.
She said most books that are banned or challenged are about marginalized communities.
"And the really sad part about that is that means fewer kids get to read these books," Garton Scalon said.
But advocates say those books are needed to make sure that people can see themselves represented or learn from communities that they aren't a part of.
"It is part of of making humans feel safe and and helping humans get to know each other and make them feel safe," Garton Scanlon said.
That's a mission of the Austin Public Library Foundation.
On Wednesday, the foundation [hosted] an author who wrote a book about an investigation into a school district's censorship. The foundation hosted a workshop on how to advocate for books as part of a Banned Books Week wrap-up event on Friday.
Alaska tooWasilla’s only book store to host banned books popup event
https://alaskapublic.org/2024/09/25/w...
The ACLU of Alaska and Out North Radio co-hosted the event at Black Birch Books in Wasilla on Thursday afternoon from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Black Birch Books owner Taylor Jordan has a section of banned books in her store, and said the event is a way to unite Mat-Su residents.
“It’s just kind of a way to bring people together and support literature in every way,” Jordan said. “There’s never really a reason to ban or censor a book, because the luxury of a book is, if you don’t like it, you can set it down, and you never had to pick it up in the first place.”
Boo North CarolinaCharlotte-Mecklenburg Schools tells staff not to ‘explicitly’ celebrate Banned Books Week
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...
CMS leadership told staff Monday they shouldn’t make displays or hold events that specifically highlight Banned Books Week. Any displays should, instead, “promote reading in general.”
“The district maintains a neutral stance on the celebration of (Banned Books Week), and while we fully support promoting ethical access to and use of resources, we must ensure that any displays or activities remain in compliance with district policies,” a district spokesperson wrote in a message sent to digital learning and library staff Monday. “Media Coordinators are encouraged to promote reading and literacy in alignment with our curriculum, but without explicitly celebrating (Banned Books Week).” The letter, which The Charlotte Observer obtained from both CMS and community members, was not signed. However, the district said the guidance was issued by its academic leadership team. The letter went on to cite the district’s process for selecting and reviewing library materials and the required criteria, including that content is age-appropriate.
Stacy Staggs is a CMS parent and an organizer with Public School Strong, a public education advocacy group in North Carolina. By asking librarians not to celebrate Banned Books Week, CMS is not truly maintaining neutrality on the event, she said. “Had they written that email without the explicit direction to not celebrate Banned Books Week, they might be able to claim neutrality, but that’s not what they wrote” Staggs said. “There is a clear directive in that communication to not talk about Banned Books Week.”
Staggs says it’s a misguided attempt to avoid ruffling feathers over Senate Bill 49, titled the Parents Bill of Rights. The NC law, which passed in August 2023, prohibits “instruction on gender identity, sexuality and sexual activity” for grades K through 4. It doesn’t, however, define those terms or what constitutes “instruction.”
Staggs says the district’s decision delivers a worrying message to marginalized students and staff. “Those are groups whose voices are being pulled off the shelves,” Staggs said. “When CMS gave that directive, they’re promoting the erasure of these marginalized groups…That affects students when they don’t feel safe.”
By contrast, Weiss, chair of the Mecklenburg County chapter of Moms for Liberty, says the district made the right call. “I appreciate the directive because there have been incidents in the past where highly s---alized material was promoted, and parents had no idea that kind of age-inappropriate material was available to their children in an educational setting,” Weiss said. “It’s easier to make things clear ahead of a potential incident than to try to clean up and explain matters after one occurs.”
Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/new...
Good news in NebraskaHow Rooted Books in Nebraska is combatting book bans: 'We really, really care'
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entert...
Danielle Helzer of Rooted Books & Gifts in Grand Island, Nebraska decided to open Rooted Books & Gifts to give "60,000 diverse residents who were without a new bookstore for 10 years, a "third space" in our community that doesn't revolve around food or alcohol. Additionally, opening our store is a small way to combat attempts nationally and locally to ban books and restrict access to information."
"Our customers love the cozy vibe and our diverse products. We prioritize selecting inventory that represents the diverse identities of community members who typically don't get to see themselves or their cultures reflected in a local store. This means we have books in Spanish, Arabic, and Somali. We sell books and gifts that center and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, and our inventory includes perspectives from other historically marginalized perspectives. This is not easy to do in a rural, conservative state, so I'm proud of our community for rallying around us and supporting our store. I am proud to create a welcoming space that is for the curious among us, those wanting to build bridges and learn about others beyond their personal perspectives. We have already filled several bulk orders for schools, businesses and other organizations taking money away from corporate America and keeping those dollars where they belong: Our community."
"We will be kicking off Banned Books Week Sept. 21 with our grand opening! We will have a special display featuring books that are frequently banned or challenged in our area. We'll be creating TBR lists of banned books with information about how to advocate against book challenges at the local and state level. We are also participating in our community's Welcoming Week Initiative in conjunction with Welcoming America. We'll be hosting a story time with the book "All Are Neighbors" and will be doing a mini-lesson and craft on the many countries and languages represented in our tiny corner of the world. We're also jumping on that silent book club bandwagon and hope to create a multi-generational community of local readers!"
Wow during Banned Books Week? I don't even remember that book containing anything terrible shocking EXCEPT for the fact that the father, an educated doctor in their country of origin, could only find work as a cab driver. I was about 15 when I read it when it was first published! We read way more intense adult novels in honors English classes in JUNIOR high and 10th grade high school honors English. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/loca...
This Banned Books Week, a challenge plays out in a Tillamook school
In the Tillamook School District, there's a new book ban debate playing out — all centered around a book published more than 30 years ago.
"How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" was part of the 10th grade English curriculum until this past summer. According to the Tillamook Headlight Herald, students and parents started complaining about sexual content, and a district committee recommended the school board remove it from the curriculum — which they did, though the book is still available in the district's library.
But hundreds of people have shown up to school board meetings and written to the paper opposing the book's removal, including the author herself, Julia Alvarez.
She wrote, "Having come from a dictatorship where books were censored and discussions were discouraged, I know how important it is that we protect not just our homes, communities, and borders but also our bookshelves."
Bry Hoeg, a store manager at Powell's Books, said they have had customers come to them, complaining about some of the books they carry.
"There are a lot of books out there that people disagree with, and we support your right to disagree with the material that's in these books, but it's important that everyone has access to them, so they can make those decisions for themselves," Hoeg said.
Hoeg added that it's important to keep the books available for kids whose schools have banned them and because data from the ALA shows that the majority of challenges are for books either by or about people of color or LGBTQIA+ people.
"We believe that open mindedness is the most important part of reading, that you should read everything and trust yourself, trust what you're reading and make your own decisions," Hoeg said. "If you're reading something that you disagree with, you can stop reading it. You can put it down. But when you suppress other people's ability to access that information, that's what's dangerous."
IllinoisU.S. Rep. Mary Miller backs book ban at Carrollton High School
https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/art...
PAYWALLED
People are supporting 'book sanctuaries' despite politics: 'No one wants to be censored'https://www.usatoday.com/story/entert...
In Kentucky, Paris-Bourbon County Library declared itself a “First Amendment library” after one family challenged 102 books in a short period. Most of the titles related to the experiences of marginalized people. Removing them would have been “antithetical to everything that I believed in,” director Mark Adler told USA TODAY.
He waited until a board meeting to make his decision – if the community was OK with the removal, he would resign. If they opposed the challenges, he would “stay and fight for them.”
Those opposed to book removals outnumbered supporters by the hundreds.
“We had people across the political spectrum, we have people from both of the major parties on (the board) and they were highly supportive. They don’t feel anybody has the right to tell somebody else what to read, and certainly not to tell somebody else’s children what to read,” Adler says.
“Our collections have to be diverse and be a reflection of our society we live in, meaning you can’t just have one kind of viewpoint represented,” Pu says. “(Book sanctuaries) provide at least some baseline protection so a librarian can do our job and curate a thoughtful, diverse collection of all kinds of voices.”
Even in Texas, a state with the second-highest number of book bans, the Harris County Public Library system felt an outpouring of support when it declared itself and its branches a book sanctuary.
As the schools around them were removing titles from their shelves, director Edward Melton thought it was necessary to have a safe place for students to access information outside of the classroom. Though being a book sanctuary doesn’t provide any legal guardrails, it helps the staff feel comfortable doing their jobs without the threat of retaliation. It’s also a comfort to know the Commissioner’s Court, the local governing body, supports the right to read in Harris County, Melton says.
“We thought initially this would be treading into some shark-infested water – it really hasn’t been that experience,” he says.
Since adopting the resolution last year, Harris County has embraced the fight against book banning wholly. The county authorized a mural downtown protesting book bans. They’re also hosting concerts and book talks for Banned Books Week.
Much of the book banning debate gets lost in semantics, Melton says. He approached the issue by going back to basics. When he uses the phrases “intellectual freedom” and “censorship,” he says people connect the dots about what’s really happening.
Similarly, that’s why Adler and the Paris-Bourbon County Library opted for the phrase “First Amendment Library.”
“I don’t care what your background is, what you’re interested in reading,” Adler says. “If you’re interested or have some drive to learn about something, my responsibility as a librarian is to help you find your material.”
Before becoming a book sanctuary, Melton recommends librarians first have a thoughtful conversation with local government officials to cut above the other politically charged language they may have heard.
“In America, no one wants to be censored. Everyone wants to be able to have intellectual freedom in terms of choosing what they read or choosing what information they consume,” Melton says. “It’s a fundamental right people really embrace. So if you start talking about taking away someone’s intellectual freedom, that’s when the community really gets up in arms.”
And though the libraries are on the front lines, Brown says anyone can get involved. For influencers, it could be making a video about banned books. For cafes and bookstores, it could be displaying frequently challenged titles.
“The more we have voices pointing out the importance of this that aren’t necessarily working in the field, the more it sends a message that this is an important issue and this is something that affects people,” Brown says.
MontanaLibrary employee raises awareness of Banned Books Week after trustees bar celebration
https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2024/...
After Flathead County Library Board of Trustees directed staff to no longer celebrate Banned Books Week, one longtime staff member took matters into her own hands, making a sign and displaying banned books outside the library during her days off this week.
Sierra Benjamin has been working at Flathead County Library for nearly a decade. In an interview this week, she said she’s tired of the drama surrounding Banned Books Week, noting that a protest of the board’s decision last year resulted in no change.
“I think the people who protested last year are just kind of burned out, but I don't mind being out here and reading books and talking to people for a few days,” Benjamin said.
Banned Books Week is the annual week-long celebration of books that have been challenged or removed from public schools and libraries. It is intended to draw awareness to the “freedom to read” and First Amendment rights.
Last year, Flathead County Library trustees directed staff to not incorporate it into displays and programming, citing a decision to distance themselves from the American Library Association, an organization that supports Banned Books Week.
Board Chair David Ingram said at the time that he and other trustees believe the observation is too divisive, but that their decision affects all association related events, not just Banned Books Week.
Some trustees described the association as “Marxist” and politically motivated, but last year trustee Jane Wheeler pushed back against that notion. She pointed out that the association provides resources for libraries across the country.
There was no outcry this year, except for Benjamin, who displayed her small sign on the steps outside the Kalispell branch earlier this week. She read and had copies of famously banned books on display....
When people stopped to ask about the sign and books, Benjamin explained why the books had been removed from shelves at various schools and libraries across the country. She also gave out homemade zines with information about Banned Books Week.
Ingram said at Thursday’s library board meeting that he didn’t know of Benjamin’s display outside the library this week. But he said she is free to do whatever she likes in her off-time.
Both Ingram and Library Director Teri Dugan said no one attempted to stop Benjamin from sitting outside with her display.
When it comes to Banned Books Week, Dugan said they have “let that go by” after not celebrating last year.
“We have materials in our library that are available for everyone and come in and checkout at any time. So, we didn't see a need to necessarily highlight [Banned Books Week,]” Dugan said.
Back to TexasEl Paso bookstore fights censorship with weekend sale on banned books
https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/el-paso...
used bookstore in central El Paso is standing up to censorship by having a sale on banned books this weekend.
Brave Books, located at 1307 Arizona Ave., near the International Museum of Art, is discounting over 250 banned books on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
According to the bookstore, the participating books have all been either "banned, challenged, censored or burned across school districts, states and countries for various reasons."
Oklahoma City'Not going to stand for it': Bookstore takes aim at Walters with 'Banned Books' display
https://okcfox.com/news/local/not-goi...
One Norman bookstore owner put State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) at the center of her display highlighting the event.
The windows of the Green Feather Book Company show Supt. Walters on a pride flag background with the slogan "Ryan Walters Probably Hates This."
The display also highlights books like Gender Queer and This Book is Gay.
Heather Hall, who owns Green Feather, proudly stocked her shelves with books that have caused major debate in Oklahoma and across America.
"It's important for someone like me who doesn't have someone standing over them saying 'I'm going to fire you if you make me mad' to speak out and to have this conversation. 'Cause this is a critical conversation," she argued.
Hall is defending titles that have drawn fierce criticism from the state superintendent, who argues it's common sense not to have such titles on school library bookshelves.
Hall stated such books are important because they're reflective of students and that librarians are more than qualified to decide which material is appropriate for which ages.
According to the store owner, "Random legislators with business and axes to grind in the state capitol making those decisions for our communities is so strangely antithetical to the idea of public education."
Michiganpaywalled story with the usual rhetoric of explicit books
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...
Previously
A long-running battle over s--ual-themed books has now cost the Alpena County library board members their jobs
Voters save library: voters approved a property tax renewal.
Voters’ decision ensures the library has the needed funds to remain open and continue to provide services for the next decade.
Concerned Alabamians gather to reflect on Banned Books Weekhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/concerned-...
Read Freely Alabama is a volunteer activist group that focuses on opposing censorship in Alabama libraries. On Saturday, the final day of Banned Books Week, Read Freely Alabama hosted an event at The NewSouth Bookstore in Montgomery.
At this event, Alabama-based library activists and supporters of the cause gathered to discuss banned books and the current state of Alabama libraries.
One organizer, Angie Hayden, explained the impact of events like these.
“I think that’s where the change happens,” Hayden said. “That is the very definition of grassroots mobilization, and that’s what we are, and that’s what we have been from the beginning. And it has really been so effective that it shocked us.”
Christina Garner explained the importance of books being available in libraries.
“A lot of people think it’s not banning because you can just go buy it from Amazon. Not everyone can, and I don’t think that I should have more access to books just because I can afford to buy something from Amazon,” Garner said. “Not everyone has access to Wi-Fi at home, not everyone has access to air conditioning at home. They deserve a safe, comfortable place to go so that they can have their kids — you know — safe place to study, to work on their homework, to do homeschooling activities. And it’s not hard to say that the library should be for everyone.”
At the event, members of Read Freely Alabama also discussed the Miller Test, a test that the U.S. Supreme Court established to determine obscene material.
“There is not a single book in a single library in the state that fails the Miller Test,” said Jessica Hayes. “Every one of the books that have been challenged have passed the Miller Test because they are not obscene.”
OregonHundreds push back on removal of ‘How the García Girls Lost Their Accents’ novel from Tillamook High School curriculum
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/09/2...
The book, published in 1991, will still be available in school libraries, but the school board deemed it was “not suitable” for 10th-grade English language arts students
“The majority of the committee felt that this text was not suitable for use as curricular material for 10th-grade English Language Arts,” said Superintendent Matt Ellis in a letter to the board this August.
The recommendation to remove the book passed on a 4-3 vote by the committee — four members voted not to retain the book in the class’s curriculum, two voted to retain it as part of the curriculum while offering students alternate texts to read, and one voted to retain it without restriction, according to the Headlight Herald. The board would later solidify the decision to remove it.
“However,” Ellis said in his letter, “the novel will still be available to students through our school libraries.”
Ellis also recommended the school board review its policies and procedures regarding things like curricular adoptions, challenges and complaints.
...
At its August meeting, the Tillamook School Board approved the committee’s decision to remove Alvarez’s novel on a 3-1 vote, with Board Chair Kris Lachenmeier voting against it. The board’s fifth member, Jeannie Christensen, was absent. According to the meeting minutes, several people spoke in support of or expressed concerns about the book during public comment.
Since then, hundreds of community members, illustrators and authors have spoken out against removing the book from the English curriculum, with many calling on the school board to reconsider. Some have submitted op-eds to local news outlets as well.
Complaints shared in the Sept. 9 meeting also addressed the process used to review and remove the book, as reported by the Headlight Herald. Board members stood by the decision in the recent meeting.
Among the authors questioning the decision was Alvarez herself.
“When I arrived in this country as a young immigrant in 1960 with a traumatized family fleeing a bloody dictatorship, my sisters and I were confronted with many challenges, with no ‘roadmap’ as to how to understand this brave new world,” Alvarez wrote in a letter to the editor of the Tillamook County Pioneer.
Alvarez is not a Tillamook resident, but her agent said community members asked her to weigh in on the controversy.
“Thankfully, I found wonderful teachers and librarians who introduced me to books and became my guides here,” she wrote. “It is because of them that I became a writer and also a teacher, spending over 44 years teaching every grade level, from elementary school to high school and college.”
But Alvarez said there was still something missing — no books were available back then that reflected the stories of people like her and her family.
“Part of my motivation in writing that first novel was to try to understand, through character and story, the challenges we faced as a family,” Alvarez said. “It was the novel I wished I had been able to read and share with my classmates in the hope that it would deepen our understanding of each other.”
While some who testified to the school board in favor of removing the book said they felt the content was inappropriate — with one going so far as to say that including it in the curriculum was “grooming” — others said they felt it reflected real-life stories.
The Headlight Herald reported that one parent testified during the August board meeting in favor of keeping the book, saying that as a Latina mother in the district, she felt the book reflected her mother’s lived experience as an immigrant. She also argued that students are exposed to more s--ual material than what is in the book on the internet, according to the article.
Author Jodi Picoult battles book banners across the UShttps://www.freep.com/story/news/colu...
Picoult, with the clout that comes with dozens of successful books and the recent No. 1 bestseller, "By Any Other Name," is asking for an opening act. Find a librarian, she says, to spend a few minutes talking about the perils of censorship and book bans.
After that, she'll wax poetic about her prose.
Champion intellectual freedom': Local efforts, new mural draw attention to challenged bookshttps://www.telegraphherald.com/news/...
Dubuque Iowa
paywalled
‘Banned Together’: Community gets 1st look at documentary about local students’ fight for books – The Island News – Beaufort, SChttps://yourislandnews.com/banned-tog...
– More than 200 people gathered Sunday afternoon, Sept. 22, at St. John’s Lutheran Church for a private screening of the documentary “Banned Together: The Fight Against Censorship.”
The documentary, directed by Kate Way and Tom Wiggin and produced by Way, Tom Wiggin, Jennifer Wiggin and Allyson Rice, follows three local young women – Beaufort High’s Millie Bennett, Battery Creek’s Isabella Troy Brazoban and Beaufort Academy’s Lizzie Foster — during their senior year of high school as they played a prominent role in “fighting for the books to return to the shelves” during Beaufort County School District’s review of a list of 97 books that were challenged for appropriateness of content after a complaint was filed by two Beaufort County residents in October 2022.
The documentary ties the efforts of the three young women into the larger national picture of the rise of Moms For Liberty and book challenges across the country.
Golden State Readers spreading awareness for book bans, local students #BreaktheTape - KESQhttps://kesq.com/news/2024/09/26/gold...
[S]tudents from the Palm Valley School are raising awareness for banned books with a campaign called #BreaktheTape
Anais Lee, Mirabelle Lee and Abby Assefa are all a part of the Golden State Readers, a youth-led organization of California freedom to read advocates, and they're heading the campaign at their school.
The Break the Tape movement encourages students nationwide to wrap their backpacks in caution tape to raise awareness for book bans.
"It's important to know all aspects of the world instead of just specific pieces," said Abby Assefa, a Golden State Reader. "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."
And the campaign has helped raise awareness here in California, but also across the nation.
"Last year when we started this campaign mostly students in California participated but this year we've expanded to students in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia, Florida, Arizona and other states," said Anais Lee.
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/fo...Fort Worth ISD librarian navigates challenges, finds magic in books
"Every day is a unique day, every day is not like the last," said Yuridia Valenzuela, the librarian at Greenbriar Elementary in Fort Worth.
"Building a collection has become a challenge," she said. "I don't just make a decision; it's also made with the rest of my colleagues who also pitch in; these are books that we've read, these are books that we've gone through the process of looking at the books making sure that they have the right language. Making sure that it follows the policies and guidelines of the district," said Valenzuela.
That can make loving your job a little harder, but Valenzuela never doubts she's in the right place.
"My doctors wanted something different for me," said Valenzuela.
After 10 years as a teacher, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That, combined with burnout, made her know she needed a change. After a conversation with her sister, she realized her love of reading needed to take center stage in her career.
"MS brought the library to me," she said. "The fact I get to be here and impact a bigger group of students, I thank MS for that, I thank my diagnosis for it."
And when you have that "why" in your heart, you won't let a few obstacles stop you from doing your job and serving your students.
"Our job is to provide books that are diverse, bring topics that the students are interested in," said Valenzuela.
2024 Librarian of the Year weighs in on book ban controversyhttps://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/...
Lisa Varga, executive director of the Virginia Library Association and 2024 Librarian of the Year by Library Journal. She shares an opposing viewpoint of the bans, and believes in diversity on bookshelves in schools and libraries.
“This is a violation of the First Amendment,” says Varga. “When you intentionally remove items because of viewpoint discrimination, that violates the First Amendment rights of others.”
“There’s this belief out there that educators and librarians don’t want parents involved in their kids educations, and that’s just not true,” she says. “Libraries are there to support everyone. Our goal is to protect the First Amendment and to make sure that people aren’t violating that by dictating what is and what isn’t in the library.”
IndianaParents discuss book banning at Garrett High School
https://www.21alivenews.com/2024/10/0...
The Garrett-Keyser-Butler school board discussed the banning of “The Handmaid’s Tale” at Monday’s meeting.
The book was removed from the 12th grade, dual credit English course, after a student raised concern.
Parent and teacher for 17 years, Laura Freeze, supports the superintendent’s choice to remove the book from the curriculum.
“I don’t want this book in schools. Now in the library, that’s fine. They’re not banning the book, they’re just saying it shouldn’t be in the curriculum,” Freeze said.
But Jessica Carlson, former English teacher at Garrett High School, believes it is a quality book to challenge students.
“First of all, as an educator myself, I value diverse thinking and diverse thought,” Carlson said. “And this is an advanced and challenging text, that brings up a lot of questions about our society.”
Freeze us concerned the topics in the book are too mature. “I’ve worked with kids who have been s--ually assaulted, who have found loved ones after they have committed suicide,” Freeze said. “Reading a book like this could trigger horribly, detrimental things with kids where we have no idea what they are going through.”
But Carlson believes while difficult topics, the overall meaning of the book is important. “The purpose of the book was to expose some of the ideas from authoritative regimes, and what happens when people are controlled by various others,” Carlson said.
As of Monday, the book has been reinstated back into the classroom.
Flash Mob Promotes Freedom to Read – The Arapahoe Pinnaclehttps://arapahoenews.com/24981/latest...
Colorado
Arapahoe Community College
Last week marked the annual Banned Books Week, and the students and faculty at ACC came together to share their support of the freedom to read – with a flash mob. ACC faculty members Professor Monica Fuglei, Professor Stephanie Lindberg, and Librarian Lara Beckwith organized a flash mob reading in the Littleton Campus library on September 25th.
Members of the library faculty, as well as students and professors from two classes, converged on the library at about noon last Wednesday, September 25th, as they engaged in an act of civil disruption, a sort of controlled chaos, as they went around the library reading loudly from passages in banned books. This brazen violation of the library’s usual quietude brought immediate attention to the demonstration as students and staff in the library who were unaware of what was happening looked on in confusion.
Math instructor Erin J. was caught off guard by the flash mob during a tutoring session with a student, but was pleasantly surprised once she was made aware of the purpose. Erin thought the demonstration was great overall, both in its effectiveness at getting the attention of passerby and in its messaging: “If someone tells you that a book is banned, you should immediately wonder why and the only way to figure out why is to read it.”
Lara Beckwith, Access Services Librarian and one of the organizing faculty of the event, felt the flash mob would be especially effective at garnering attention from an unaware audience. She remarked that the effectiveness of the flash mob is owed both to the surprising element of doing one at all, as the flash mob has fallen out of viral popularity in recent years, as well as the inherently discomforting and disruptive nature of speaking loudly in a library. Beckwith shared several comments about the inconsiderate, stifling nature of book bans and encouraged everyone to read the banned materials for themselves and form their own opinions.
Jalear Fiddler, a second-semester Business Marketing major at ACC, was one of the student onlookers to the event. Fiddler was unaware that the flash mob was taking place and found it an especially peculiar disruption to his usual time in the library. While certainly effective at getting his attention, Fiddler felt the messaging was a bit unclear: “I think it’s interesting. I don’t know why they’re doing it in a library; I don’t know what we can do about that [book bannings]. I understand they are bringing awareness to it, but to interrupt other students working and studying, I don’t know if that was the [most] effective way to go about it.”
Monica Fuglei, one of the faculty organizers of the flash mob, and a professor in the English department, shared that the flash mob was born out of a desire to raise awareness about the increasing issue of book bannings, but that it was also a result of an unfortunate lack of time and capacity to come up with a series of events as they had in previous years. Fuglei echoed the sentiments of other faculty organizers and onlookers that the flash mob approach was effective at getting attention, but maybe fell short of calling to action those witnessing the event. In potential future flash mob events, Fuglei stated she “would like to have a small handout or something like that, so that we could follow that attention with action.”
Their hands were tied.South Carolina
Charleston Co. school board makes first vote in state book ban policies
https://www.live5news.com/2024/10/03/...
The Charleston County School District’s Board of Trustees took the first step Wednesday night in implementing a new rule to regulate which books are allowed in public schools.
This summer, the new law went into effect for all South Carolina schools and requires school books and learning materials to be age and developmentally appropriate.
Since the South Carolina Department of Education implemented the new law, the Charleston County School District’s Board of Trustees had no choice in approving the policy.
The board approved the first reading of a majority of the policies, but a few additional more specific policies will still need to be voted on in the future.
The state law completely bans material for any age group if it includes visual depictions or descriptions of s--ual conduct. It also outlines a process for someone to challenge them all the way up to the State Board of Education.
“If we allow this removal of diverse content and curriculum, we will be failing as a county to serve the students in the emotional capacity that everyone here has sworn to do,” One Charleston student, Dylan Ryan, said at the meeting.
A local school board also has the authority to adopt a local policy that goes beyond what is required in the regulation.
Board members were presented with multiple, very detailed policies that are aligned with state regulations. Some were revised after already being in place and others were completely new.
“I realize that it’s difficult to define that right now, but I want to make sure that we recognize that it’s still very vague and the interpretation of that is very loose,” Board of Trustees Member Courtney Waters asked.
The rule mandates districts maintain a list of all books and materials in their libraries and media centers.
The regulation allows the State Board of Education to have the final say in local disputes over what materials are appropriate, ranging from school library books to even those read by an afterschool student book club.
“I do have grave concerns that this was created,” Board of Trustees Member Dr. Carol Tempel said. “This regulation was created by an unelected group, and that also has not been reviewed by the legislature.”
Beyond that, it states districts need to provide a list of instructional materials in classes upon reasonable request from a parent or guardian.
Arkansas -good news for a changeFederal judge orders Crawford County Library to return books to children's section
https://www.4029tv.com/article/crawfo...
A federal judge ruled Monday that the Crawford County Library System must return books it has been moving from the children's section and into a portion of the adult section since 2022.
The judge ruled the library must keep children's books in the children's section "without consideration of whether they approve or agree with the viewpoints expressed in such materials and without consideration of whether the viewpoints expressed in such materials are unpopular or controversial."
...
https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/20...
In a clear rebuke of government-approved censorship, a federal judge ordered Crawford County officials late Monday to stop segregating library books with LGBTQ+ themes into a special section with stigmatizing color labels.
The ruling by Judge P.K. Holmes III in U.S. District Court in Fort Smith came in a lawsuit filed in May 2023 by three mothers on their own behalf and their minor children’s.
Crawford County’s attorney, Gentry Wahlmeier, told the Arkansas Times on Tuesday that he did not expect an appeal.
“The County has thirty days to make that decision, but preliminary talks among counsel point toward no appeal,” Wahlmeier said in an email.
That decision may be at least in part because of a separate and still-pending lawsuit before another federal judge over Act 372, a statewide library censorship law the Arkansas General Assembly passed in 2023. Among those challenging the law’s constitutionality are the Central Arkansas Library System and the Fayetteville Public Library. Crawford County is among the many defendants in that case as well.
U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks has set the bench trial in that case to begin Dec. 16 in Fayetteville. Challenged portions of the law are on hold, pending the trial’s outcome.
...
“It is unquestionably true that the First Amendment permits public libraries to restrict minors’ access to materials that are not age-appropriate, but while those restrictions will inevitably be content-based they must still be ‘viewpoint-neutral,'” he wrote.
As for Crawford County, the judge found, it had violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Holmes wrote that “it is one thing to restrict minors’ access to s--ually explicit material, but a very different thing to restrict minors’ access to unpopular opinions. Here, the undisputed evidence shows that the social section was created not only for the former purpose but also for the latter, which violates the First Amendment.”
The decision is a welcome and much-needed interpretation of the First Amendment at a time when many county officials, state legislators and Arkansas State Library Board member Jason Rapert have been working hard to end those rights when it comes to transgender themes but pretend otherwise. Indeed, moving potentially objectionable or politically unpopular books out of a section for minors — or “segregating” them — is Rapert’s preferred alternative to the more accurate term, “banning” books.
The judge cited an example of the problem that occurs when decisions are based on viewpoint. He referred to testimony by a member of the county’s Library Board, Kaelin Schaper. Schaper was asked during a deposition whether a children’s book about two men getting married and currently located in the social section would be inappropriate for the children’s section. “Mr. Schaper replied that it is inappropriate,” the judge wrote. “Then when asked whether it would be appropriate for inclusion in the children’s section if it were identical except one of the characters getting married were changed to be a woman, Mr. Schaper replied that it would be appropriate.”
Rosalie Stewart is the anti–book banning public policy manager at Penguin Random House.https://slate.com/culture/2024/10/boo...
MarylandBanned books find shelter in Anne Arundel County’s ‘sanctuary library’
https://marylandmatters.org/2024/10/0...
In Anne Arundel County, the library’s board of trustees’ decision follows passage of the Freedom to Read act in the last legislative session. The bill took effect on its signing in April.
The new law says that any library receiving funding from the state has to follow certain standards and can’t, among other things, remove material due to partisan, doctrinal, ideological or religious disapproval.
These attempts have been happening “not just in our state, but in our county of Anne Arundel,” said Del. Dana Jones (D-Anne Arundel), the lead sponsor on the Freedom to Read Act. She spoke at a news conference held last week during the national observance of Banned Books Week.
During the event, County Executive Steuart Pittman also declared the entirety of Anne Arundel county to be a book sanctuary.
Once the announcement concluded, Myers rang a big silver bell to announce that it was time for “Banned Book Storytime,” featuring a book called “Grandad’s Camper,” by Harry Woodgate.
This week's news. Some good some bad.California makes it harder to ban books in public libraries
https://edsource.org/updates/californ...
California joins Illinois and Maryland in passing a law that makes it harder to ban books. Assembly Bill 1825 prohibits book bans based on “the race, nationality, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, social economic status or political affiliation of a book’s subject, author or intended audience.”
It also requires libraries to develop and make public a policy governing how library staff select, acquire and manage library materials. The policy must include a process for the public to challenge library materials.
The new law will protect library staff from being fired or disciplined if they are following the policy when they make programming decisions or refuse to remove a book.
Bad news from British Columbia, CanadaThe B.C. Conservative party is running on a platform that calls SOGI 123 “divisive, an assault on parents’ rights and a distraction to student education.” SOGI 123 is not part of the curriculum: it’s just a set of resources available to educators.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...
For years, there's been conflict over SOGI 123 teaching materials meant to make classrooms more inclusive and safer. They've become a problematic divider that educators say is based on misinformation, but one that a politician — with a chance to become B.C.'s next premier — is hoping helps bring him to power.
"SOGI in itself has become too divisive. It's become very problematic. Many parents want to see it go," said John Rustad the weekend the campaign kicked off.
"So we need to remove that and make sure parents have their rights and engage with their kids in schools."
SOGI 123, or Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, was established in schools in 2016 by the then-ruling B.C. Liberals, as part of anti-bullying policies. Rustad was a cabinet minister in that government.
SOGI 123 is not a curriculum but provides guides and resources to help teachers address discrimination and bullying, create supportive and inclusive environments for 2SLGBTQ+ students and acknowledge varying genders and sexual orientations.
However, some parents maintain SOGI encourages children to change genders. Others say it goes against religious values.
"SOGI is an infringement upon parents' rights," said Amrit Birring, an anti-SOGI protest organizer and Freedom Party of B.C. candidate during a small anti-SOGI rally in Surrey in September, a year after thousands attended rallies across Canada over the issue, which resulted in confrontations and arrests in some places.
Educators maintain detractors simply misunderstand what SOGI is.
"Absolutely a very misunderstood part of education," said Clint Johnston, president of the BCTF.
"[SOGI resources] have absolutely made schools, classrooms a safer place. That's feedback that comes from our members. That's feedback that comes from students when they are asked."
Still, Rustad, who got his first election win in Prince George's school district as a trustee in the early 2000s, has aligned himself with those against SOGI.
He used his first question in the provincial legislature last October as the new Conservative leader to call out the B.C. NDP over the materials.
"Parents are concerned about the s----alization of their children in this NDP government's education system," he said. "Will the minister admit that SOGI 123 has been divisive, an assault on parents' rights and a distraction to student education?"
The question drew fire from B.C. NDP Leader David Eby, who criticized Rustad for leveraging children's safety and education to bring what he called a "culture war" to B.C.
"It is outrageous that he would stand here and do this. He sees political advantage in picking on kids and families and teachers and schools who are just trying to do their best for kids who are at risk of suicide," said Eby
"Shame on him. Choose another question."
The B.C. Green Party says the Conservative position is a distraction from the real issues facing B.C.'s education system, such as chronic underfunding for teachers and support staff like education assistants, counsellors, and school psychologists.
The Conservative leader has steadfastly argued that B.C. classrooms are biased politically and insists changes are needed for schools to be places of learning.
"Kids must be taught how to think — not what to think," he has said repeatedly in party materials.
The party is running Heather Maahs as its candidate for the riding of Chilliwack North. As a local school board trustee, she's has been outspoken over how sexuality is taught in classrooms and library books such as, All Boys Aren't Blue, a coming-of-age story about a queer person of colour.
Rustad has also taken aim at books in libraries and told media that, if elected, he would strike a committee to review all school textbooks and literature to ensure they are appropriate.
Political watchers say Rustad and the Conservatives are making SOGI 123 and library books an election issue to show how the party is different from the NDP to hopefully gain votes.
...
In the meantime, educators want voters who feel unease over SOGI 123 or books in libraries to speak openly with teachers in schools about it, not with placards, marching and chanting on streets.
"It's frustrating … at times to see the adults in communities having these kind of discussions and debates," said Johnston. "Whereas in schools, what we see is students understanding each other better."
This is despicable and gives lie to the "only in schools" argument. Free. Volunteer. Not tax payer funded. If your 5 year old runs away and can reach up into the box and grabs a book you consider inappropriate, that's on you. Chances are most kids can't and don't want to read the adult books in the box anyway. Parents your own children! Leave everyone else alone.https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake...
Advocates of school book bans have shifted their sights toward Utah's Little Free Libraries after a Democratic lawmaker planned to add banned books to the volunteer-run curbside collections in her district.
Driving the news: State Rep. Sahara Hayes (D-Salt Lake City) recently announced on Instagram that she planned to celebrate national Banned Books Week by placing titles that are banned in a Utah school inside Little Free Libraries.
That led to accusations that she was distributing "explicit content" to children in violation of Utah laws.
Some of the activists have previously filed police reports accusing schools of distributing pornography because they carried books by acclaimed authors like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood and Sherman Alexie.
Brooke Stephens — a leader with Utah Parents United who called for Hayes' prosecution and has previously mobilized parents to report librarians to police — argued last week that owners of Little Free Libraries should face prosecution if they make "obscene" material available.
Book ban opponents say threats to prosecute people for simply having or putting books in reach of children likely will have a chilling effect on authors, parents and owners of Little Free Libraries.
What they're saying: "If you're someone who runs a Little Free Library, you have to make the choice: 'Am I going to put these things in there and take the chance' [of a p---graphy charge]," Peter Bromberg, a policy advocate for the Utah Library Association, told Axios.
"Even having that levied against you as an accusation — forget if you can actually defend yourself in court. … Are you going to be targeted?" Bromberg asked. "Your address is public, your Little Free Library is public. Are you going to be vandalized? Are you going to be threatened?"
Salt Lake City police said they had not received complaints of Hayes' book-sharing as of Thursday.
Her district also includes part of South Salt Lake; police there did not immediately respond to Axios' inquiry.
Between the lines: It's unclear how that risk might extend to owners of tiny libraries — but "in a pluralistic democracy that relies on the rule of law, that we should not be running our society based on people's wondering whether they are at risk," Bromberg said.
A Washington Terrace family built a "Little Banned Book Library" outside their home specifically to feature restricted books, KSL-TV reported last year.
Parents question book used in 8th grade Watertown school classroomhttps://www.wwnytv.com/2024/10/04/par...
school assignment got a failing grade from at least one parent this week.
The book, ‘The Hate U Give,’ is a multiple award-winning young adult novel. It’s very popular.
At Flower Memorial Library in Watertown, there’s a waiting list to read it.
But the book has also been the target of parents’ ire across the country, because of its language and because of its message.
At the Watertown city school board meeting this week, Dr. Christina Copeland, a parent, objected to the book being taught in 8th grade classrooms.
“This is not appropriate for kids to be taught in school, there are parents who are very upset about this,” she told the board.
She read excerpts from the book which contained a number of expletives and a description of a s---al encounter.
Copeland said she was uncomfortable reading the passages out loud and disliked the fact her child is assigned the reading. She also made clear that she does not oppose schools teaching about racism and discrimination, but questioned the timing of it.
“Not as a 12,13, 14 year old. How mortifying is that. These kids are going through puberty,” she said.
The book is meant to shine light on racism and teach kids the value of doing good.
Copeland says she asked if her child could have a different assignment and was told if that happened her child would learn alone in the library.
We reached out to school superintendent Dr. Larry Schmiegel, who said he doesn’t want to comment right now and has a meeting set up with librarians next week to talk about the book. There’s also a meeting to focus on school Diversity, Equality and Inclusion happening Monday.
Children's Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Out of the Blue (other topics)The Princess in Black and the Prince in Pink (other topics)
My Rainbow (other topics)
Butt or Face? Volume 3: Super Gross Butts (other topics)
The Day the Books Disappeared (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jodi Picoult (other topics)Sarah J. Maas (other topics)
Ellen Hopkins (other topics)
Jodi Picoult (other topics)
Scott Stuart (other topics)
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The bad actors don't quit
Cobb citizens group to protest ‘p_____graphy in Cobb schools’
https://eastcobbnews.com/cobb-citizen...
takingAstandcobb@ email.com?
school board members as Randy Scamihorn and Brad Wheeler, the current and most recent chairmen. Both are Republicans who are up for re-election in November.
“we are a group of Cobb Citizens that have fully researched the book contents, and believe the public has a right to be fully informed.”
No names were disclosed.
The message also said that a representative from Gays Against Groomers will be on hand for the press conference.
It’s a national organization that is “fighting back from inside the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children happening under the guise of “LGBTQIA+,” according to its website.
That also includes opposition to “queer theory and gender ideology being taught in the classroom.”
East Cobb resident JoEllen Smith