Be Your Own Library Advocate (2024)
“Public libraries are not play places. They are not cooling centers or warming centers or mental health clinics. Public libraries are not bars, nor are they essential services. Public libraries are places of information and access to information. They are places that ardently defend the rights of every person to seek out that information. This is fundamental and yet not highlighted or underlined enough. Public libraries are cornerstones of democratic and civic engagement, not safety nets for broken systems elsewhere. They might take on those roles, but that’s not their purpose.
No one else can raise your social value for you. You have to do it yourself. You have the data here to support it.”
Trauma, Book Bans, and Libraries: A Resource Guide for Library Workers, Library Supporters, and Beyond (2024)
“While library workers have watched the last several years of censorship play out, the belief that they could be next has played a role in increasing stress and activating the fight-flight-freeze response. No longer is trauma seen as a result of an incident; this cycle acknowledges how possibility can activate a trauma response, even if that possibility is not necessary for the cycle to unravel.”
Book Banning Will Not Stop at Schools (2024)
“In the current book banning climate, there is a pattern worth paying attention to: what begins in public schools seeps into the public library. This begins at the ground level in board meetings and then emerges in higher-level offices. Proposed legislation at the public school level has seen success — look at the Texas READER Act, the expansion of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Iowa’s S.F. 496 (currently partially enjoined), Indiana’s HB 1147, Kentucky’s SB 5 — in part because it is an easy sell to legislators. They want to protect kids or at least be on record, looking as though they want to protect kids. What better way to do just that than through laws that put parents front and center in the schools? To the average person not paying attention to what’s actually happening, it sounds good.
That is the same mentality behind the emphasis that book banners aren’t banning books because the kids can get them at the public library.”
American Intolerance and Book Bans (2024)
“Until we acknowledge implicit and explicit intolerance of others running through the narratives of “parental rights” and “protecting the children,” we cannot make meaningful or lasting change. The First Amendment rights guaranteed by the Constitution should be granted to all people, not a select few. Limiting these rights limits the extent of our democracy by encouraging intolerance for others. The only way democracy survives is through tolerance.
A path to building, cultivating, and practicing this tolerance is through access to diverse books.”
Data Overwhelmingly Supports Libraries and Library Workers (2024)
“In a time when library workers are beleaguered by rhetoric from the far-right and are the most likely to be handling book banning issues, it is important to remember the vast majority of parents trust and respect librarians. Where tensions or conflicting ideas emerge is where there is opportunity to educate and challenge mis- and disinformation about the roles and responsibilities of librarians and libraries.”
Why Do We Even Read? (2024)
“The growth of algorithms that reinforce sameness and groupthink, paired with America’s history of discrimination and blatant disregard for the rights of all, clarify this contemporary moment of book banning.”
How to Talk About Book Bans with Friends, Library Patrons, and More (2023)
“Something that needs to be understood about the reality of book bans right now is this: teaching other people about what is truly going on — beyond the singular headlines — is crucial, and it’s going to mean you need to get uncomfortable. Whether you’re a book lover or parent who is sharing stories or work in libraries or schools where your patrons and parents may not understand the scope of censorship right now, doing the work means getting uncomfortable. It means “getting political.” It means not taking neutrality as a stance. It means really learning how to talk about book bans.
So how do you do it? Let’s break this down into two different, though related, avenues. The first is educating friends or family, the people in your life for whom you don’t work on their behalf. The second is patrons or customers, the people in your life who you might serve in your role as a librarian or educator. These ideas are meant to be jumping off points. Tailor and adapt as appropriate.”
How Faith-Based, Right-Wing Money Is Waging War Through Book Challenges (2022)
“How do book challenges relate to the disintegration of public education? While it seems that book challenges are about removing any discussion of people of color and queer people from classrooms — a truth worth acknowledging — it’s much bigger than that. Book challenges are one of the many prongs being used by right-wing, faith-based groups to destroy public education as a whole in order to fight for school choice, vouchers, and a white-washed, “liberty” centric history.”
Soft and Quiet: Self-Censorship in an Era of Book Challenges (2022)
“Quiet censorship — also known as soft censorship or self-censorship, terms used interchangeably — is when materials are purposefully removed, limited, or never purchased at all despite it being a title that would serve a community. It’s always been an issue with intellectual freedom, but now, with more “parental rights” groups demanding curricular and collection oversight, even the best professionals who don’t believe in censorship are falling victim to choosing the path of considering the people who may complain over those who may need the material.
In Anna’s school, this plays out in several ways.
“I was working with a really bright, innovative teacher who was rethinking how to teach To Kill a Mockingbird in class. We were building a reading list that could supplement the text for her honors class, and based on the teacher’s criteria, I suggested Out Of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez,” Anna said. “The instructor said to me ‘I can’t afford to add it because of the attention it’d bring.’”
Censorship Bills on the Table in Nearly Half of US States (2022)
“In 2022, don’t anticipate that book challenges and wide-ranging censorship of books will slow down across the U.S. They’ll be amplifying, thanks to right-wing and extremist white supremacist groups like No Left Turn, Moms for Liberty, and dozens of state-based organizations, as well as dark money.”
LGBTQ+ Books Quietly Pulled From Washington State Middle School (2022)
“In what reads as a story we’re seeing frequently across the country, a school principal in Kent, Washington, has removed a series of books from Cedar Heights Middle School’s library in anticipation of potential publicity for those materials being made available to students. This “silent” or “quiet” or “soft” censorship has played out from Pennsylvania to Florida, Wisconsin to Washington, and because it’s so rarely reported, less attention has been shined on these stories than those where protestors show up to school board meetings.”
Gavin Downing, the librarian in this story, is now among the most well-known anti-censorship fighters today.
How Are Censors Encouraging Others to Join Their Campaigns? (2022)
“By cherry-picking the facts of the board’s meeting about the book, the writer is able to rile up fellow “concerned parents” by selecting examples that fit her specific agenda. Nowhere does she recognize this is a book that is made available to second semester seniors, that it’s been in classrooms for half a decade, nor that it’s part of a health class. Of course students are learning “math, science, and English,” but they’re also learning health.”
High Plains Library District Programming Policy Welcomes Censorship (2022)
“What Parks describes is censorship. This is not, as the Board member said, a means of being neutral. It’s a targeted policy meant to suppress and/or eliminate discussions related to anti-racism, to activism, to social justice, and to queer lives. These topics do not encourage “another side,” much as the Holocaust does not either — and all of these topics deeply reflect the collections within the HPLD.”
Brooky Parks, the librarian in this story, is also among the most well-known anti-censorship fighters right now.
Book Sales, Promotion, and Donations Don’t Solve Censorship (2022)
“The Streisand Effect won’t change the reality of censorship. It doesn’t create a movement to protect First Amendment rights. It’s consumerism, packaged neatly as intellectualism and moral superiority. The real attack on legal freedom granted by the U.S. Constitution is downplayed by efforts to sell the books, and while it might put the books on bestseller lists, it doesn’t fix the problem.
Because this isn’t about the books. They’re just the tools.
It doesn’t matter how many copies of a banned book are donated to a school or public library. It’s flashy and it’s something I’ve certainly helped do to make a point. The world we’re in now, though, needs more than that — it needs people on the ground doing something to ensure intellectual freedom remains a cornerstone of American rights.
That’s not to say there’s not good intention behind it. Unfortunately, good intentions don’t make change when the eye of the hurricane is already here. The reality is those most hurt by these book bans and challenges are those young people we see, as well as those we don’t, can’t, and refuse to see. A book being pulled from a school library does have a tremendous impact on kids who don’t have money, transportation, or the ability to be openly themselves or openly curious about the world. They can’t simply buy the book or go to a public library. To think or say as much comes from tremendous privilege.”
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Book Censorship News: February 28, 2025
- Livingston Parish Library (LA) has removed tens of thousands of books from their YA shelves. Why? Librarians are being forced to read them all and remove books with “explicit content.” No such thing exists, but now 30,000+ books have been banned in this public institution and taxpayers are on the hook for a lot of wasted time, energy, and money.
- The South Dakota House of Representatives has advanced a librarian criminalization bill.
- North Dakota’s bill banning “sexually explicit content” in public schools and public libraries has moved forward. Reminder: there’s no such thing.
- European Department of Defense Education Activity have two more weeks to be in compliance with the executive order to pull books. There is a private organization now opening an investigation into what books need to be pulled or removed.
- 18 authors involved in a forthcoming Supreme Court case over the use of LGBTQ+ books in a Maryland public school—remember, they have an anti-book ban law—have spoken out about what’s going on.
- Vancouver, Washington’s public library is now hearing from the drag queen story hour and book ban moral panic contingent.
- Politicians in Canada are mimicking the nonsense panic over porn in school and public libraries as well. This has been ongoing as long as it has in the US, but it’s accelerating in Canada, thanks to being empowered by those doing it in the US.
- Most of the books challenged at Platteville Middle School (WI) will remain on shelf as-is. One, All Boys Aren’t Blue, will be available “through interschool library loan.” This doesn’t specify if that means they’re removing it from the middle school and moving it to a high school or if they’re removing it from the district and relying on loan from a consortium.
- Brevard County Schools (FL) will begin their book review committee again.
- The Lapeer District Library (MI) has seen several rumors related to their board and its potential interests in banning books. The rumors, they say, aren’t true. It’s hard to not be fearful right now, especially in Michigan where Alpena Public Library saw similar rumors that were, well, not rumors.
- This story is paywalled, but it’s about how library leaders in Indiana anticipate more book challenges and bans throughout the state, including in public libraries.
- One grandparent pitched a fit over novel selections in a Higley Unified School District (AZ) 11th-grade class. The selections were sent home with a permission slip for parents to sign and acknowledge. Now that assignment and some of the books from it are gone. Again, ONE GRANDPARENT got an entire project changed.
- Upper Adams School Board (PA) updated the district’s library policy. It’s now going to lead to loads of bans. “Under the updated policy, the district “will avoid library materials with sexually explicit content” and/or “excessive profanity.” It also states that materials that “disparage religious beliefs” will be avoided.” Last year, this district tried to ban books with profanity in them.
- Cache County School District Board of Education (UT) will not be banning The Kite Runner.
- Eagle Library (ID) is still without two needed board members. Recall that there is a legislator in the state trying to get a whole bill written because he’s mad that the city council can’t just fire this library’s director. (You don’t need me to spell out there’s a censorship issue here and that the board is being created to be happy censors, rather than defenders of the library).
- Save Samuels PAC is ramping up its efforts to protect the public library—which has been under attack for years now—from being destroyed by the county, which is acting on behalf of a small number of folks at a local church.
- The Rainbow Parade was banned in Rochester, Minnesota, schools last month. The author was invited to be part of the city’s Pride events this summer…but that has now been canceled due to safety concerns.
- The Lexington 1 school board (SC) will decide whether or not to ban The Hunger Games from middle schools following a single complaint. The book will remain on shelves.
- Meridian Library (ID) has had four new book challenges. I’m paywalled from the story, but the first book challenged was considered this week. Recall Idaho’s law allows parents to complain and if they don’t get their way, sue.
- Pine-Richland School Board (PA) sees their new book banning policy coming closer and closer to passage.
- Christian County Library (MO), which has been under siege from a small contingent of right-wing bigots, has now withdrawn its association from the American Library Association and Missouri Library Association. Recall this is the next step in deprofessionalization and defunding more broadly.
- In 2024, Monroe County, Tennessee, schools removed 574 books from shelves to be in compliance with state law. Here’s the list.
- “Books containing violence, underage drinking and drugs or sexually explicit content at the Alamance County [NC] libraries will be labeled with a parental guidance suggested sticker, if the Alamance County Commissioners vote to approve the label. ” Who does the labeling? What if a book with such content isn’t labeled? This is not only against the ethics and principles of librarianship but it’s a massive liability.
- Frederick County Board of Education (MD) passed a new library policy that notes they won’t ban books on the basis of ideology or protected classes.
- Oradell Board of Education (NJ) denied an author visit by Chad Sell, who wrote The Cardboard Kingdom. Some believe it’s because there’s a reference to a gay person in the book.
This week on Book Riot, we covered how Indiana’s governor plans to fund Dolly’s Imagination Library after it was cut from the budget (it won’t be with being added back into the budget), where and how a story about Ohio’s public libraries being defunded emerged, and a bill that would pull funds from Iowa public libraries if they are affiliated with the American Library Association.
