thesis statement banning books

What You Need to Know About the Book Bans Sweeping the US

What you need to know about the book bans sweeping the u.s., as school leaders pull more books off library shelves and curriculum lists amid a fraught culture war, we explore the impact, legal landscape and history of book censorship in schools..

• The American Library Association reported a record-breaking number of attempts to ban books in 2022— up 38 percent from the previous year. Most of the books pulled off shelves are “written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of color."
• U.S. school boards have broad discretion to control the material disseminated in their classrooms and libraries. Legal precedent as to how the First Amendment should be considered remains vague, with the Supreme Court last ruling on the issue in 1982.
• Battles to censor materials over social justice issues pose numerous implications for education while also mirroring other politically-motivated acts of censorship throughout history. 

Here are all of your questions about book bans answered by TC experts. 

Alex Eble, Assistant Professor of Economics and Education; Sonya Douglass, Professor of Education Leadership; Michael Rebell, Professor of Law and Educational Practice; and Ansley Erickson, Associate Professor of History and Education Policy. (Photos; TC Archives) 

How Do Book Bans Impact Students? 

Prior to the rise in bans, white male youth were already more likely to see themselves depicted in children’s books than their peers, despite research demonstrating how more culturally inclusive material can uplift all children, according to a study, forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics , from TC’s Alex Eble.  

“Books can change outcomes for students themselves when they see people who look like them represented,” explains the Associate Professor of Economics and Education. “What people see affects who they become, what they believe about themselves and also what they believe about others…Not having equitable representation robs people of seeing the full wealth of the future that we all can inhabit.” 

While books have stood in the crossfire of political battles throughout history, today’s most banned books address issues related to race, gender identity and sexuality — major flashpoints in the ongoing American culture war. But beyond limiting the scope of how students see themselves and their peers, what are the risks of limiting information access? 

The student plaintiffs in Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) march in protest of the Long Island school district's removal of titles such as Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. While the district would ultimately return the banned books to its shelves, the Supreme Court's ultimate ruling largely allowed school leaders to maintain discretion over information access. (Photo credit: unknown) 

“[Book bans] diminish the quality of education students have access to and restrict their exposure to important perspectives that form the fabric of a culturally pluralist society like the United States,” explains TC’s Sonya Douglas s, Professor of Education Leadership. “It's a battle over the soul of the country in many ways; it's about what we teach young people about our country, what we determine to be the truth, and what we believe should be included in the curriculum they're receiving. There's a lot at stake there.” 

Material stripped from libraries and curriculum include works written by Black authors that discuss police brutality, the history of slavery in the U.S. and other issues. As such, Black students are among those who may be most affected by bans across the country, but — in Douglass’ view — this is simply one of the more recent disappointments in a long history of Black communities being let down by public education — chronicled in her 2020 book, and further supported by a 2021 study from Douglass’ Black Education Research Center that revealed how Black families lost trust in schools following the pandemic response and murder of George Floyd.

In that historical and cultural context — even as scholars like Douglass work to implement Black studies curriculums — the failure of schools to properly integrate Black experiences into the curriculum remains vast. 

“We want to make sure that children learn the truth, and that we give them the capacity to handle truths that may be uncomfortable and difficult,” says Douglass, citing Germany as an example of a nation that has prioritized curriculum that highlights its own injustices, such as the Holocaust. “This moment again requires us to take stock of the fact that racism and bigotry still are a challenging part of American life. When we better understand that history, when we see the patterns, when we recognize the source of those issues, we can then do something about it.” 

Beginning in 1933, members of Hitler Youth regularly burned books written by prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers. (Photo: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo, dated 1938) 

Why Is Banning Books Legal? 

While legal battles over book censorship in schools consistently unfold at local levels, the wave of book bans across the U.S. surfaces a critical question: why hasn’t the United States had more definitive legal closure on this issue? 

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a noncommittal ruling that continues to keep school and library books in the political crosshairs more than 40 years later. In Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), the Court deemed that “local school boards have broad discretion in the management of school affairs” and that discretion “must be exercised in a manner that comports with the transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.” 

But what does this mean in practice? In these kinds of cases, the application of the First Amendment hinges on the existence of evidence that books are banned for political reasons and violate freedom of expression. However, without more explicit guidance, school boards often make decisions that prioritize “community values” first and access to information second. 

While today's recent book bans most frequently include topics related to racial justice and gender identity (pictured above), other frequently targeted titles include Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close , The Kite Runner and The Handmaid's Tale . (Cover images courtesy of: Viking Books, Sourcebooks Fire, Balzer + Bray, Oni Press, Random House ‎ and Farrar, Straus and Giroux). 

“America traditionally has prided itself on local control of education — the fact that we have active citizen and parental involvement in school board issues, including curriculum,” explains TC’s Michael Rebell , Professor of Law and Educational Practice. “We have, whether you want to call it a clash or a balancing, of two legal considerations here: the ability of children to freely learn what they need to learn to be able to exercise their constitutional rights, and this traditional right of the school authorities to determine what the curriculum is.” 

So would students benefit from more national and uniform legal guidance on book banning? In this political climate, Rebell attests, the risks very well might outweigh the potential rewards. 

“Your local institutions are —in theory — protecting the values you believe in. And if somebody in Washington were going to say that we couldn't have books that talk about transgender rights and things in New York libraries, we'd go crazy, right?” said Rebell, who leads the Center for Educational Equity . “So I can't imagine that in this polarized environment, people would be in favor of federal law, whatever it said.” 

Why Do Waves of Book Bans Keep Happening?

Historians date censorship back all the way to the earliest appearance of written materials. Ancient Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti began eliminating historical texts in 259 B.C., and in 35 A.D., Roman emperor Caligula objected to the ideals of Greek freedom depicted in The Odyssey . In numerous waves of censorship since then, book bans have consistently manifested the struggle for political control. 

“We have to think about [the current bans] as part of a longer pattern of fights over what is in curriculum and what is kept out of it,” explains TC’s Ansley Erickson , Associate Professor of History and Education Policy, who regularly prepares local teachers on how to integrate Harlem history into social studies curriculum. 

“The United States’ history, since its inception, is full of uses of curriculum to shape politics, the economy and the culture,” says Erickson. “This is a really dramatic moment, but the curriculum has always been political, and people in power have always been using it to emphasize their power. And historically marginalized groups have always challenged that power.” 

One example: when Latinx students were forbidden from speaking Spanish in their Southwest schools throughout the 20th century, they worked to maintain their traditions and culture at home. 

“These bans really matter, but one of the ways we can imagine a response is by looking back at how people created spaces for what wasn’t given room for in the classroom,” Erickson says. 

What Could Happen Next?

American schools stand at a critical inflection point, and amid this heated debate, Rebell sees civil discourse at school board meetings as a paramount starting point for any sort of resolution. “This mounting crisis can serve as a motivator to bring people together to try to deal with our differences in respectful ways and to see how much common ground can be found on the importance of exposing all of our students to a broad range of ideas and experiences,” says Rebell. “Carve-outs can also be found for allowing parents who feel really strongly that certain content is inconsistent with their religious or other values to exempt their children from certain content without limiting the options for other children.”

But students, families and educators also have the opportunity to speak out, explains Douglass, who expressed concern for how her own daughter is affected by book bans. 

“I’d like to see a groundswell movement to reclaim the nation's commitment to education — to recognize that we're experiencing growing pains and changes in terms of what we stand for; and whether or not we want to live up to the democratic ideal of freedom of speech; different ideas in the marketplace, and a commitment to civics education and political participation,” says Douglass. 

As publishers and librarians file lawsuits to push back, students are also mobilizing to protest bans — from Texas to western New York and elsewhere. But as more local battles unfold, bigger issues remain unsolved. 

“We need to have a conversation as a nation about healing; about being able to confront the past; about receiving an apology and beginning that process of reconciliation,” says Douglass. “Until we tackle that head on, we'll continue to have these types of battles.” 

— Morgan Gilbard

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.

Tags: Views on the News Education Policy K-12 Education Social Justice

Programs: Economics and Education Education Leadership History and Education

Departments: Education Policy & Social Analysis

Published Wednesday, Sep 6, 2023

Teachers College Newsroom

Address: Institutional Advancement 193-197 Grace Dodge Hall

Box: 306 Phone: (212) 678-3231 Email: views@tc.columbia.edu

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What Students Are Saying About Banning Books From School Libraries

Teenagers share their nuanced views on the various book banning efforts spreading across the country.

By The Learning Network

Please note: This post is part of The Learning Network’s ongoing Current Events Conversation feature in which we invite students to react to the news via our daily writing prompts and publish a selection of their comments each week.

In the article “ Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S. ,” Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter write about the growing trend of parents, political activists, school board officials and lawmakers arguing that some books do not belong in school libraries.

As we regularly do when The Times reports on an issue that touches the lives of teenagers, we used our daily Student Opinion forum to ask teenagers to share their perspectives . The overwhelming majority of students were opposed to book bans in any form, although their reasons and opinions were varied and nuanced. They argued that young people have the right to read unsanitized versions of history, that diverse books expose them to a variety of experiences and perspectives, that controversial literature helps them to think critically about the world, and that, in the age of the internet, book bans just aren’t that effective. Below, you can read some of their comments organized by theme.

Thank you to all those from around the world who joined the conversation this week, including teenagers from Japan ; Julia R. Masterman School in Philadelphia; and Patino High School in Fresno, Calif .

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

It’s Wrong to Shield Kids From Reality.

I think the idea of people trying to censor speech is absolutely abhorrent. Right to freedom of speech, religion, peaceful assembly, petition, and press is our 1st amendment and one that we take for granted …

As a teenager I am still trying to find my way in this world; I want to know as many other viewpoints as possible so that I know my thoughts are my own and not just a product of a limited amount of information. Even if these books are not required reading they should be allowed in libraries. Families can decide what books are allowed in their homes but trying to force a community to get rid of a book is a way of forcing one’s beliefs on an entire community. Removing books about issues faced by marginalized groups is a way to ignore them, a way to minimize the issues faced by those groups and allow the banners to not have their opinions challenged. This is a democracy that should be open to discussion and if it is then people will find others who agree and disagree with them.

— Jason, Maine

Students need the option to read books they enjoy or want to read. We often enjoy books that connect to us and sometimes that may be a tough topic such as rape, violence or even gender identity. Removing books with “inappropriate content” may sound like the right choice until we dive into what was actually deemed inappropriate. A book that has a character who is transgender may appeal to someone who identifies as transgender, this book may be enjoyable and relatable for that person. Maybe a student has past trauma that they may struggle to deal with, a book that has a topic based on their past may comfort them and bring them closure. These books also inform students on what really happens within the mind and life of someone else. Banning books is an overall loss for a school or library, it only limits human growth.

— Alex, Reeths-Puffer High School

Reading the article and these comments just makes me think.”Jeez, the fact these books are being challenged shows how much some people need education on the subjects of them.” These books may have hard topics but they essentially are a needed part of education. They might be brutal and hard to swallow, but they are the best examples of real-world problems and history. They provide a good sense of realism and give kids somewhat of an idea of what goes on and has gone on in the world.

Challenging these books is like trying to protect someone from the world. Then instead shoving them in front of something that makes them think.”Everything will always work out,” And, “These things will never happen again.” It makes them think the world has no struggle or insanely big problems. When in reality it definitely does and they will be directly affected by these problems.

— Jordan , Norwood High school

These books are important to both students and teachers alike. They are educational and factual and help teachers teach more effectively. I honestly think that books like “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie should be talked about in schools. They help educate on racism and discrimination. And it seems to me that the parents and politicians who voted for these books to be banned don’t want their children to be educated on these subjects. Honestly, it’s a shame that the youth of today can’t get the knowledge they need because of this.

— Cailah , City Charter High School

Books Are Meant to Challenge and Educate.

While it’s reasonable to be concerned about the material your children are reading, as some material might not be age appropriate, there is almost never- honestly, never at all- justification for banning a book. When you look at novels like Maus, that was recently banned in a Tennessee school district for nudity and cursing, it becomes increasingly obvious what we are trying to erase- no history, no matter your opinion or concerns, should be hidden or erased, especially such horrible events like the Holocaust. If we don’t learn history, we can’t learn from it, and that is the most essential key to humanity…

Books are the primary way to tell stories, to learn right from the mouths of people who have witnessed things we need to learn and grow from. Our society depends on the idea of future generations learning and progressing, and with the banning of books all we are doing is going backwards, not forwards.

— Meghan, Glenbard West High School

According to Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, those who are calling for certain books to be banned claim it’s an “issue of parental rights and choice,” and although parents have a right to monitor the media their children are consuming, they can’t take away access to controversial books for all children.

The article discusses how the group No Left Turn in Education claims “The Handmaid’s Tale” is used to “spread radical and racist ideologies to students.” However, Margaret Atwood, the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has said that there was “nothing in the book that didn’t happen, somewhere.” Atwood used real history to create her dystopia, giving us an idea of what society could become if we don’t learn from history. If we ban books, we may end up repeating the same mistakes we’ve made before. In Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451,” he details what the world might look like if books were banned, and while “Fahrenheit 451” is an extreme version of what could happen in the future, banning books could create an echo of Bradbury’s dystopia.

Hiding away things that make us uncomfortable doesn’t make them go away. Even if we don’t talk about it, racism, sexual assault, genocide, and many other complex issues will still exist. We have to face the discomfort to keep it from happening again. While those supporting the book-banning movement claim that it’s an issue of parental rights, it’s really an issue of people trying to ban things that make them uncomfortable.

— Deeya , Bryant High School, Arkansas

If parents start trying to ban books that are intended to be informational and tell the story of certain minorities the history can start to slowly fade away. For instance, say parents and governments can now dictate what we should and shouldn’t learn soon enough as more generations come there will no longer be the acknowledgement of the Holocaust and the horror of what Hitler did, he will just be another “bad leader”. This will lead younger minds into believing that no one and no country is capable of such horror like slavery or concentration camps but the fact is they are.

— Savannah, Gray New-Gloucester High School

As a student who has read most of the “challenged books” whether that be for school or just on my own, I feel that banning these books would be one of the worst ideas ever. For the younger generations it is so important to gain knowledge about the injustice others face constantly. By banning books with important context, we risk the inception of more racial injustice within our society as a whole. No matter how horrible our history is, it is more important now than ever that students are well informed to prevent repeating history.

— Madison, Maine

Limiting Books Students Can Read Also Limits Perspectives Students Need to Access.

I am part of the LGBT+ community, specifically nonbinary and pansexual, and books discussing LGBT+ topics or even featuring queer and trans characters are a continuous target for banning. Erasing LGBT+ people and experiences from literature creates a sense of otherness for queer and trans people, especially queer and trans youth. Also, having books with LGBT+ topics and characters constantly in contention of whether they will be banned or not has an effect on LGBT+ youth because it shows them that their existence is a topic of debate. I, personally, had no queer or trans influences until I was in middle school. If I had books with LGBT+ characters or were about real LGBT+ people, my feelings would have been validated much earlier. My feelings of not feeling “like a girl” or feeling some kind of attraction towards girls, I would’ve had a name for them and realized that it was normal because it is. Queer and trans experiences are valid and normal and literature that shows that is incredibly important.

— Salt, Maine

I personally believe that removing books about sexual assault, gender, sexuality, and racism is not right. Having access to those types of books is important because it helps us as students learn more about people’s perspectives and helps us become more open-minded in the real world. To put it in another way—if we are not exposed to books that discuss the struggles of people all around our country, then it limits us from understanding each other. Sometimes the content can be uncomfortable to read, but it is necessary to understand the lives of others.

— Hilary , Don Bosco Cristo Rey High School

As a gay male, seeing attempts to remove LGBTQIA+ content from shelves is almost hurtful. All my life, books have been about the same thing; two straight, white people meet and fall in love. But in recent years, I’ve finally had access to literature that I can identify with. I can relate to characters who realize they don’t identify as straight, and find the same gender as them attractive. I can relate to those characters who have a family member or family members that think they’re disgusting or sinful for being attracted to those of the same sex. Because of how I can relate to these pieces of literature, it helps me know that I am not the only one to go through this, and there are others who share my story. By banning books, children are being told they should stick to the group they were born into, but that mindset is what led our country into the state it exists in. No one can agree on anything because no one understand every side of the story. Without diverse literature and proper education, our country could never move forward. Leave the books be.

— David, Muskegon, Michigan

If these books get taken down for inappropriate content, we need to find out the root reason why…Is it because these books talk about severe racism, sexuality, gender, and real-life harms? Why shouldn’t people learn how to identify, treat others with respect, understand how to help/support your BIPOC community, support victims, and understand the horrors inflicted upon LGBTQIA BIPOC people? Learning or understanding these issues will better your society, the empathy people have for others and have a way to have self-empowerment and community.

— Ez.,California

People in the L.G.B.T.Q community and in the minority groups use these books as an outlet, and a way to connect to the world to feel support…By removing these books, it creates a sense and feeling of not being accepted, or to have the right to be a part of the communities. I personally get a feeling that with the schools removing these books, it opens a feeling of shame. It silences these groups, these communities, these people, resulting in making them not feel valid, or even humanized.

Just like Petocz, I am also a student in school, and during these times of removing these books, it worries me that my passion for knowledge, and my passion for understanding my society and myself, will be hindered by someone’s views on what is acceptable and what is not.

— Kyler, Reeths-Puffer Highschool

In school libraries, I think there should be more books around less popularized topics like drug addiction, black authors, LGBTQ stories, and non-American authors. These books are eye-opening encourages you to challenge your way of thinking. I recently read a book about drug addiction and I learned to destigmatize recovering drug addicts because I know how easily someone can become addicted (Heroine, McGinnis). The book also discouraged drug use through honest education and brought less well-known side effects to light

— Emma, Cary High School

Simply banning books because they’re too much of a “sensitive topic” will only harm young readers. Books are supposed to enhance our understanding of topics, history, etc. The books that are on the list of being banned are all books that help readers understand certain topics to a significant extent. As someone who’s never had a human figure to ask about sensitive topics with, books helped me answer my questions and curiosity among the topics.

— Teada, Gray New Gloucester High School

Book Bans Aren’t Effective. There Are Better Ways to Handle Sensitive Subjects.

I think, regardless of whether or not libraries should stock “inappropriate” books, banning books has the opposite of the intended effect. While it may have been successful in the last because schools and libraries were the only real way to be exposed to books—aside from buying them—now it is way too easy to find whatever information you need online. Kids are naturally curious; if you tell them they can’t read a book—especially if it’s inappropriate—they’re going to try to read that book, and more likely than not, they’re going to be able to access it online. I believe banning books is unjust and erasing important points of view, but more importantly, I believe that it’s ineffective.

— Linnie, Glenbard West High School

I think the attempt to remove books from school libraries is pointless and a waste of time. If a student wants to read a book they can just go to a public library or the internet. The internet makes all of these efforts pointless. There is so much information on the internet that can be considered way more controversial. And the internet is in almost every child’s hands.

— Declan, Michigan

In my opinion, the best way for a parent to address their concerns to a school over a book is to have a civil conversation with the school, to either help guide the parent in how to talk their child through the content that they may be worried about or find a solution that results in something like a warning tag on the book, rather than the removal of the book altogether.

— Celia, Cary High School

Living in a very diverse and complex society, families should learn to accept that students are exposed to a range of thoughts and opinions. If you prefer to stay away from the content of a specific book—don’t read it! In a case where a book you dislike is required and is being taught in class, communicate with the teachers and nicely share your concerns! Still, as students of this generation, we should learn to cooperate and adapt to the environment we are in, for we won’t always have the option to ‘ban’ whatever and whenever we want.

— Lara, Cary High School

Parents and Lawmakers Deciding What Students Should Read Is a Slippery Slope.

There has been a growth in the number of books being challenged by parents and activists. I can see the reason for concern. There are some books which are fairly intense, the messages of which could be misconstrued by younger children. However, first off, a great many of these complaints are being directed to school libraries, where staff and educators devote time in their classes to the careful analysis of such books. In such an environment, the idea that a reader would misinterpret the work as a promotion of gore or sex seems fairly far-fetched.

Secondly, the benefit these books have on students far outweighs the risks. Ultimately, though there are a few books written for cheap thrills—for the “oohs” and “aahs” of shock and other emotions—many works are written for the purposes of sharing the author’s viewpoint and the way they have experienced the world. We read books, especially in classrooms, to grow our understanding of the world and to enlighten ourselves with the experiences of others so that we can apply our learnings to our own lives. To strike a book for violence, sex, or sexuality is to say that these subjects are not worthwhile to learn about, that they are not relevant to our lives in the real world. Reality is not censored or sanitized; reality is full of experiences dealing with these subjects, and we owe it to the coming generations to make them ready to process those experiences.

— Ethan, Glenbard West High School, IL

I think there are certainly better ways for concerned parents to be placated without going as far as banning books in school libraries. They could work to establish systems that flag books that could contain or do contain “sensitive” topics. Then only with parental permission could a student check out a flagged book. It’s inconsiderate to take opportunities to read and learn about topics important and sentimental to kids away from an entire school of students just because a few parents don’t like their kids reading those same topics.

— Arrionna , Michigan

It is essential for students to have relatively unrestricted access to books describing race and LGBTQ issues. However, I think that pledging to represent “all perspectives” of certain topics in libraries creates a slippery slope.

Take the book Maus, for example. Having read the book in 8th grade, I would strongly recommend it to all students due to its presentation of honest descriptions of the Holocaust in a digestible manner for teenagers, and I believe this book should be kept in school libraries. However, I worry some would attempt to create a “balanced” perspective for students by placing Holocaust-denying books in the library as well, even though the genocide’s existence, scale, and horror is indisputable.

We should, by all means, allow students to absorb multiple opinions and ideas. We should let students read both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx. But we must not allow this quest for balance, for a wholistic perspective, to corrupt our youth with misinformation and flat-out lies.

— Sean, Glenbard West High School

The efforts to erase books of certain topics is outrageous. Many of these are removed because of sensitive issues that they are worried will make the reader uncomfortable but the author didn’t write these books or topics so that the reader can feel comfortable … There are regardless going to be stories that are questioned but in most cases, they shouldn’t be banned/removed because who has the right to ban literature? And who decides what students can handle with subjects?

— MaRynne, Colorado

Banning Books Limits Thinking.

I feel that by banning books that talk about certain topics you are limiting what a child can think…One of my favorite quotes is by Haruki Murakami. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” I think that this quote is very important, especially now because this is what banning books will do to us. If we ban books that talk about topics but leave only books that talk about one, we can only think about that one topic and we can only think about what they want us to think. By banning books you’re banning knowledge, banning opinions, banning our future.

— Ava, J.R. Masterman in Philadelphia, PA

Presenting kids with varying ideologies and different types of stories is really helpful, it encourages critical thought, it can shape emotional reactions in a very low risk way, and for a lot of students it is presents representations of themselves that they find comforting. Even when parents argue that books are dangerous, there is far more to be said for the help and comfort they can provide. Even books like Maus - that forced me to understand more the reality of my Jewish identity and the history of my culture - even when it was painful, present such immense value in intellectual and emotional development. It makes me very sad to think that students in Tennessee no longer have this opportunity in there schools

— Dorothy, Colorado

When situations like this arise, I think that they always show how one pathed the education system is, and how it is getting even worse. Without these types of books that challenge regular thinking patterns, it will be like millions of clones are being released into the world at graduation. I am very set that these books should be allowed in schools because they cause students, such as myself, to think outside of the box. That may be present in learning about something unknown, such as another continent’s history, or learning about struggles experienced by others that you weren’t aware of happening. Without these books, both experience and expansive knowledge are highly limited, stopping students from growing into their potential to progressively change the world.

— Laine, Cary High

I think that by removing books from libraries you are taking away peoples’ stories and creativity. Therefore, you are lessening the creative thinking in students.

— Molly, Glenbard West High School

Many times, schools try to “hide” kids from real world history or issues like over policing or the Holocaust. They try to teach kids “pretty” history by numbing down what content kids are actually taking in. I believe that this is hindering kids all over the United States because it promotes them to think almost in a bubble, in the sense that they cannot fully grasp why some things are bad or why they are learning about them. This causes the kids to almost laugh these subjects off, which in turn means that these students become oblivious to what is going on around them, which promotes things like racism and the holocaust as almost a joke, meaning that these issues will never be tackled because of how oblivious kids are to them.

— Ian, Gray-New Gloucester High School

Book Banning Is a Form of Discrimination.

This is nothing less than a display of homophobia, transphobia, and any other kind of hate based on gender and sexual identitiy from those advocating to remove these books. Schools should treat LGBTQ students the same as they treat cisgendered individuals. But when books about the former’s experiences are banned, those students are likely to feel unwelcome and unsafe in what is supposedly a good place for adolescents to be. If lawmakers and school boards were banning all books having to do with gender and sexuality, including when it has to do with people outside of the LGTBQ community, this would not be as bad. But the truth is that the LGBTQ community is being targeted. The hatred that fills the heart of lawmakers and members of school boards is on full display here. It is simply wrong for them to impose their own anti-LGBTQ beliefs on the students under their control.

— Kyle, W.T. Clarke High School

If parents want to get rid of any romance books with gay characters, they’d better be prepared to get rid of all romances, because otherwise it’s unequal. I think that efforts across the nation to remove books discussing racism and other social issues are essentially efforts to silence the voices of others … Does The Hate U Give, an eye-opening novel about being a young black girl in America, really have to be considered equal to Adolph Hitler’s autobiography in the eyes of a school?

— Paulina, Julia R. Masterman Middle School

The efforts of parents, activists, and lawmakers across the nation to remove books mainly about race, gender, and sexuality is absolutely ridiculous. The fact that a good amount of these protests are specifically conservative groups pushing their challenges into statehouses, law enforcement and political races does hint at discriminatory practices. Politics and personal agendas are being brought into a place where there is such a diverse collection of books—or graphic novels—that anyone should be allowed to access in their library if they choose to do so. Challenging books in this manner is like getting upset that another person is eating a chocolate chip cupcake, since you’re the one on a diet.

— Rebeca, Cary High School

Learn more about Current Events Conversation here and find all of our posts in this column .

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Finding common ground.

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. He can be found at www.petermdewitt.com . Read more from this blog .

Banning Books Is Not About Protecting Children. It’s About Discrimination Against Others

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In a recent article focusing on collaboration and developing collective efficacy , Katz and Donohoo write,

Collaboration is an essential ingredient of quality implementation, as it is for most high-quality professional learning. But while collaboration sounds easy, it is anything but. It’s not difficult to put a group of people together, but how do you ensure that being together adds value? And how do you avoid getting mired in conflicts and contradictions?

Katz and Donohoo’s questions are important ones. Our collaborative work should add value. Unfortunately, in conversations with teachers and school building and district leaders, it is apparent that there are numerous conflicts they are experiencing which prevent deep collaboration , and it’s not just due to COVID. It’s actually due to politics and the infiltration of right-wing conservative thinking in our public school system.

Lately, there have been numerous news stories about parents who want to ban books. In a recent story on NBC News , they reported more than 50 percent of the books being banned center around an LGBTQ character and children of color. Coincidence that book-banning is around LGBTQ characters or characters of color? Probably not.

In fact, Harris and Alter write ,

Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said, “In a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.”

Isn’t it interesting, or rather infuriating, that in the very place that students should be engaged in challenges to their own thinking in order to grow as learners, these people are actively making sure that schools are not able to create opportunities for that thinking? Isn’t it interesting that some of the very groups who yell so loudly about cancel culture are the same people trying to cancel discussions about ideas that come to us through books? If Katz and Donohoo are correct about collaboration and conversation, which they are, where is the added value in banning books?

Pornography Is an Intentional Word

The dumbing down of America isn’t due to watered-down curriculum as much as it is the direct result of parents, leaders, and teachers who choose to ban books because, somehow, they don’t agree with what is written within those books.

In an effort to undermine the quality of the books, governors like Greg Abbot of Texas calls them pornographic . Although I would love to say that Abbott chose his words incorrectly, the reality is that he intentionally chose that word to get parents in his state up in arms. I wonder how many of the books being banned have actually been read by the parents trying to ban them.

Sure, they can read a passage at a board meeting, but have they actually read the whole book?

The interesting thing about reading is that it is supposed to expand our ideas and thoughts, not coincide with our confirmation bias. Books are supposed to inspire us to engage in debate and an exchange of ideas, but too many of these states that are banning books would rather censor the freedom of thought. What are they so afraid of? Isn’t it funny that so many of these parents want to unmask their children at the same time they force a mask on their child’s ability to choose a book for themselves? And they certainly seem to mask what this banning is all about, which is pushing institutional racism in their schools.

This Is Not New

The reality is that this issue is not new. People have been trying to ban books for as long as we have been a country. The sad, and often hidden side of all this is when librarians feel the pressure to self-censor the books made available in a library. They do not feel they will be supported by their principals, so they choose to not purchase books for their libraries that may make waves.

In fact, in this article published by the American Library Association (ALA), Asheim writes ,

But many librarians have been known to defer to anticipated pressures, and to avoid facing issues by suppressing possible issue-making causes. In such cases, the rejection of a book is censorship, for the book has been judged—not on its own merits—but in terms of the librarian’s devotion to three square meals a day. Do not misunderstand me—I am as devoted as any to the delights of the table and a roof against the rain. But these considerations should not be mistaken for literary criteria, and it is with the latter that the librarian-as-selector is properly concerned.

As you can see, censorship has many forms, and it’s not just about the seedy instances you hear while watching the nightly news.

Representation Matters … Even If It Makes You Uncomfortable

Many years ago, Albert Bandura began researching self-efficacy, which is the belief we feel in our own abilities. Self-efficacy is context specific, which means we all have areas where we feel confident and areas where we don’t.

What Bandura found in 2000 is that leaders who feel efficacious double their efforts, but those who do not feel efficacious slacken their efforts. What this means is that when leaders, and in this case parents, feel uncomfortable, they will try to stay away from the conversation as much as possible. This is unfortunate, because the only way to become more comfortable is to engage in conversations that help build understanding.

So many people seem to be running away from the very conversations that we should be running toward. But they probably know that already. They don’t want to understand it, nor do they want their children to understand it, which is why they want to ban it. Whether we are conservative, liberal or somewhere in between, we should see representation in the books offered at school. If we are Black, brown or gay, we should see ourselves represented in books. It’s our choice whether we want to check them out or not.

Book banning is a weak response to ideas that scare us. Are the people banning books the same ones that yell from the rooftops that there should be less government involvement in decision making, and yet they want to ban books for others without giving those people a chance to choose for themselves? In states where books are being banned, there should be more and more people who are speaking up against censorship. Kats and Donohoo are right that collaboration within schools is difficult and sometimes complicated. It seems that collaboration within school communities is probably even more complicated.

All in all, the sad reality of all this is that censorship and book banning will definitely work. Too many teachers and leaders do not feel efficacious enough to speak up against these loud censoring parents because they love their jobs and students too much to risk losing their job and students. At some point, though, oppression and ignorance should not be allowed to win this battle.

The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Morris Library

• 618-453-1455
• [email protected]

Banned Books: Protect Your Freedom to Read

• Protect Your Freedom to Read
• The Banned Book Collection in Morris

Banned Books Week is celebrated annually, with sponsorship from the American Library Association (ALA), the National Association of College Stores, and many other organizations. According to the ALA, "Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States."

A Worrisome Trend

ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 book challenges reported in 2021. Censors targeted a record 2,571 unique titles in 2022 , a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community or by and about Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color.

• Censorship by the Numbers Resources documenting the number and locations of censorship attempts against libraries and materials compiled by ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom.
• Book Ban Data, ALA Latest numbers from ALA about book bans and challenges in the United States, including preliminary data from the first half of 2023. TL;DR: They're up. A lot.
• Banned and Challenged Books ALA's page devoted to censorship attempts and the annual Banned Books Week celebration.
• Book Bans, PEN America Resources and commentary related to book bans in the U.S., including a comprehensive list of successful school bans, assembled by a national writer's association.
• Ralph E. McCoy Collection of the Freedom of the Press Housed in the Special Collections Research Center on the first floor of Morris Library, the McCoy Collection offers the opportunity to explore issues of censorship and freedom of expression from a historical perspective. It is one of the world's best collections of rare books highlighting the history of First Amendment freedoms. It includes examples of many books that have been banned in the United States and Europe over the centuries. Many of the books listed below part of this collection. more... less... used in Overview of African American history collections in SCRC on Resources for the Study of African American History in Southern Illinois: Overview of Special Collections
• Beacon for Freedom of Expression The Beacon for Freedom project maintains an extensive database of censored publications and publications about censorship.

Banned Books Club and Books Unbanned

The Banned Books Club is a collaboration between libraries and sponsors to make banned books available online and at libraries for free. The University of Chicago and the Digital Public Library of America are offering free access to all Illinois residents through the Palace app.

• Banned Book Club Program to provide free access to electronic copies of banned books. Follow the steps to "Access Banned Books" to get your free card and start reading.
• Banned Books Club at the Palace Project Jump straight to the app the Banned Book Club uses to provide access to available titles.

A number of public libraries nationwide have joined the Books Unbanned initiative, offering free access to commonly challenged or banned titles in eBook form to readers age 13-26. If you fall in that age bracket, sign up for a free temporary library card and read banned books!

• Boston Public Library Books Unbanned Program
• Brooklyn Public Library Books Unbanned Program
• Seattle Public Library Books Unbanned Program

Top Ten Challenged Books from the Last Five Years

Banned in 2021 - 2022

According to PEN America, 1,636 different books were banned—not only challenged, but actually removed from shelves—in classrooms, schools, or libraries in the U.S. for at least a portion of the time between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. The following is a list of these banned titles available through Morris Library.

• Next: The Banned Book Collection in Morris >>
• Last Updated: Feb 22, 2024 11:55 AM
• URL: https://libguides.lib.siu.edu/bannedbooks

The official publication of the NAACP

Book Bans: An Act of Policy Violence Promoting Anti-Blackness

By Dr. Phelton Moss

Book bans represent acts of policy violence that further codify anti-blackness in the DNA of America. 

Two weeks ago, the  NAACP  filed a  lawsuit  in Pickens County, South Carolina, alleging their most recent ban of Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi's book " Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You " from every school district in South Carolina is unconstitutional in that it violates the student's first amendment rights and is politically motivated. Unfortunately, the all-white  Pickens County School Board  is among a growing list of violent actors who must be stopped. They deliberately censor what literary works kids can and cannot read — and in many cases, having not read the books  themselves  before voting to ban them. What is more violent, as evidenced by the books they are banning, they choose to censor the teaching of the factually accurate history of Black people. These violent acts are rooted in an un-yielding legacy of racism, prejudice, oppression, and anti-blackness.

As a young boy growing up in rural Mississippi, I recall my aunt filling my bookshelves with books that told the factually accurate history of Black people — often signing books gifted to me for holidays and special occasions such as Kwanzaa and my birthday with the charged phrase, "Know Thy Self." These books often came with money — "…when you finish, I have $20 for you." Today, while they no longer include $20, these acts have extended to a tradition of passing books that tell and affirm the factually accurate history of Black people between us. This practice would not have been required had I attended a school that sought to teach the honesty and factually detailed account of Black people. Today that remains the reality for many Black children. And to make matters worse, far too many Black children whose families have been impacted by the history of racism and oppression won't be able to purchase books for their children — much less incentivize children to read their history as my aunt did me.

The tradition of passing books with my aunt was (and remains today) an act of love and rebellion — more profoundly, it was an act of Black liberation. My aunt was deeply critical of the lack of teaching of the factually accurate history of Black people. She was most struck by the fact that my schools intentionally shared the narratives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but failed to offer the narratives of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. Thus, choosing to reject the complete, factually accurate account of Black people's history.

Books bans have increasingly become the policy tool of anti-black policy leaders who systematically perpetuate intolerance and ignorance. These attempts systematically and disproportionately impact Black youth who would benefit from the literary work's interrogation of society as they shape their understanding of their people's history.  These violent actors know the cascading effect such works would have on all youth's ability to challenge, interrogate, and ask for a better America.  For example,  many school districts nationwide have banned  " The Bluest Eye " by Toni Morrison. Morrison's work has been integral in shaping classroom conversations across America on race and prejudice. As such, these attempts to censor literature and silence Black writers are politically motivated and profoundly un-American.

This pedagogical violence, caused by actors with no teaching experience in schools, has been painstakingly done to keep the factually accurate history of Black people out of the hands of Black children. And, while in many classrooms across America, teachers have chosen not to teach the factually accurate history of America, it is now being codified through acts of policy violence today — namely, book bans! As these acts of policy violence continue to sprout up as part of intentional acts of anti-blackness in the halls of state legislatures, local school boards meetings, and even Congress, with the recent passage of the  Parents Bill of Rights , civil rights leaders must fight against the attack on Black students to keep them from learning the factually accurate history of Black people in America.

For years, this country has successfully worked to pass violent laws to maintain a permanent  caste system  to include an illiterate fraction of Black people through the passage of Jim Crow laws and literacy tests to ensure Black people could never pick up a book — much less read it to know their history. Today's book bans join the growing list of anti-black violence by a dwindling majority, insistent on keeping Black children from learning the factually accurate history of racism, prejudice, and oppression in America.

We must fight bans on books that teach the honest, factually accurate history of Black people in America most dramatically — from litigation such as the Pickens County, South Carolina case to challenging lawmakers at state capitols and school board members in local communities through both policy debates and electoral politics. As such, the NAACP is committed to preserving, defending, and protecting the factually accurate history of Black people in this country. Especially that of those who, for 400 years, through violent policy acts such as enslavement, forced migration, redlining, sharecropping, gentrification, gerrymandering, segregation, etc., have been relegated to simply existing through white supremacy. As the NAACP works to dismantle these and other acts of policy violence, we ask that you join us in this fight. The NAACP will continue to support local, state, and national efforts to fight back against book bans. Let us know how we can help you fight book bans in your local community!

• Education Innovation

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What Are We Protecting Children from by Banning Books?

By Katy Waldman

You can find, on the Web site for Duval County public schools, in Florida, a list of books nominated for removal from the district’s libraries between 1978 and 2009. It’s a revealing artifact: a map of cultural anxieties and a portrait of books as enduring flash points. The challenges range from endearing and silly to sinister. Some preoccupations remain with us: race and history, profanity, sex. Roald Dahl (“vulgar, unethical”) was a frequent offender. “ Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret ,” by Judy Blume , got challenged once, in the eighties, for irreligiosity and again, in the two-thousands, for “introduction to pornography.” Other nominations are more idiosyncratic: in 1983, “Little Red Riding Hood” was side-eyed for “violence, wine”; a goofy poetry collection, “ The Robots Are Coming ,” drew criticism, in 2004 and 2005, for “voodoo, the Devil, etc.” A prerogative of parenting is to not have to explain yourself—“ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues ” was tersely declared “not suitable”—and there is, permeating the list, not so much a driving vision as a surpassing irritability. (“ 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents ” is “rude, disrespectful”; a mischievous romp called “ Four Good Friends ” has a “negative, nonproductive tone.”)

Still, as a document of the culture war, Duval County’s list reflects a fragile sort of détente. Parents objected to particular books, and a committee reviewed their objections. Some titles were banned or restricted; many were marked “open access” and returned to the shelves. As libraries have become the latest targets of an anti-“woke” backlash stoked by Republican politicians, that system, however flawed, has gone the way of the papyrus scroll. In early 2023, parents in Duval County, which includes Jacksonville, discovered that thousands of library books had been removed pending mass review—a response to House Bill 1467, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed in March, 2022, and which mandates that all books (in libraries, on curriculums, on reading lists) undergo vetting by a “certified media specialist.” (A spokeswoman for Duval County public schools wrote in an e-mail that about 1.5 million titles were being evaluated.) The texts must contain no pornography and be “suited to student needs.” A widely circulated training video borrows language from Florida’s controversial Stop WOKE Act: media specialists should avoid material that provokes feelings of “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” related to race or gender. As my colleague Charles Bethea reports , public education in the state has since taken a dystopian turn; by one estimate a third of school districts preëmptively put restrictions on their libraries. Classroom shelves, Bethea writes, have become spectacles of dour absurdism, covered in signs announcing “Books Are NOT for Student Use!!”

Book bans, spearheaded by politicians and advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty, have been proliferating over the past few years. A PEN America paper , published last September, records 2,532 instances of book banning in thirty-two states between July, 2021, and June, 2022. The challenges are spread throughout the country but cluster in Texas and Florida. Their targets are diverse, running the gamut from earnestly dorky teen love stories and picture books about penguins to Pulitzer-winning works of fiction . Some are adult potboilers that have found their way onto school-library shelves: three out of twenty-one books reportedly recently whacked in Madison County, Virginia, were written by Stephen King, and two were written by Anne Rice. Other bannees—including “ Strega Nona ,” a charming folktale about a pot that won’t stop cooking noodles—are presumably vectors of witchcraft. Still others, if you squint, could fall under the category of “pornography,” which is outlawed by DeSantis’s H.B. 1467. (“ Tricks ,” by Ellen Hopkins, is an introduction to grimy realism, replete with drug use and blow jobs.) Yet a whiff of pretext surrounds more than a few of the cries of obscenity. “ Lawn Boy ,” a semi-autobiographical work by the writer Jonathan Evison, was flagged for pedophilia yet portrays a twentysomething recalling a sexual experience he had as a fourth grader with another fourth grader.

The most frequently banned class of books are those intended for “young adult” readers—between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It makes a certain amount of sense that Y.A.—an awkward, gawky genre, as hard to delineate as adolescence itself—is the target of the majority of bans. Some Y.A. novels are essentially adult novels with the ages changed; some seem intended for much younger children; a lot of them fall somewhere in the middle. PEN ’s list includes pitch-black and intense books that take up mental illness, addiction, cruelty, or social ostracization. (“ The Truth About Alice ,” by Jennifer Mathieu, considers slut shaming; “ Speak ,” by Laurie Halse Anderson, posits mutism as a trauma response to rape.) And a number of the banned titles—“ 13 Reasons Why ,” “ The Perks of Being a Wallflower ,” “ We Are the Ants ”—address suicide. But many more of the prohibitions seem to cohere around a specific political vision. According to the PEN report, forty-one per cent of the banned books featured L.G.B.T.Q.+ themes, protagonists, or prominent secondary characters; the next-largest category of non grata texts has “protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color.” Other problem subjects include “race and racism,” “rights,” and “religious minorities.”

The two most banned books in the country—“ Gender Queer ,” by Maia Kobabe, and “ All Boys Aren’t Blue ,” by George M. Johnson—meld didacticism with profound gentleness. The first, which recounts Kobabe’s experience of having a nonconforming gender identity, briefly shows oral sex and masturbation, but foregrounds the process of learning to accept oneself and others. (Its verboten status may also have to do with its being a graphic memoir, with images easy to lift out of context and fewer words for censorious parents to slog through.) Johnson’s book has darker shades. Growing up, the queer main character is attacked by bullies and molested by a family member. Yet the work’s message of self-fashioning may be its most provocative gesture. Johnson addresses readers directly, reassuring them of their beauty and agency. “Let yourself unlearn everything you thought you knew about yourself,” he says, in a sweetly serious oracular diction, sourced equally from Walt Whitman and “Sesame Street.” And: “Should you not like your name, change it. It is yours.”

Kobabe’s and Johnson’s works are packed with nutritious morals, helpful lessons, and affirmations as ringing as they are intimate. Grownups might find this mode exhausting—it’s not just conservative culture warriors who deride Y.A. as preachy and excessive; literary critics also get their hits in—but one of its upsides is a commitment to engaging with kids on their own terms. (Adolescents on journeys of self-making can be very preachy and excessive!) Even the banned books that contend with contemporary politics weave their themes into stories of young people finding an independent identity, or discovering ways in which the world is not as it seems. “ The Hate U Give ,” by Angie Thomas, studies the reverberations of police violence, but it’s a novel of tender introspection, not an indoctrination manual. The protagonist, Starr, begins the story changing her voice when she’s “around ‘other’ people.” “I don’t talk like me or sound like me,” she confides. “I choose every word carefully and make sure I pronounce them well.” Her triumphantly corny journey entails learning to move through different spaces proudly as herself.

Other banned books maintain an even more oblique relationship to politics. There are few soapboxes in “ The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ,” by Sherman Alexie; there is the Spokane Reservation—close-knit, dilapidated, blasphemous, and holy. The book is part comedy: its protagonist, Junior, travesties romanticized notions of boyhood with his nerdy glasses and scrawny body. (Alexie himself performed standup.) But the humor gets tangled with critique. Junior scoffs at the silver linings and neat moralism that so often streak through sanitized—and therefore child-friendly—narratives. “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance,” he thinks. “Poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”

If there’s a neon-flashing message here, it is that heterogeneous experiences produce useful insights. And the novel’s dedication to treating kids like adults makes it potentially alluring for actual adults as well. Alexie speaks to the alienated teen-ager eating Cheetos in all of our mental basements—or, maybe, to the one discovering the eroticism of libraries. “Every book is a mystery,” Junior realizes. “And if you read all of the books ever written, it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning so much more you need to learn.”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” his friend Gordy replies. “Now doesn’t that give you a boner?”

“I am rock hard,” Junior says.

As this scene suggests, libraries always exude at least a little transgressiveness. The anxiety about what kids are reading inevitably bleeds into fear about what else they’re doing—the trope of the sexy librarian, ever about to loosen her hair and initiate you into forbidden knowledge, exists for a reason. But books are obscene in another way. Their plots are irrevocable; they conjure up worlds in their opening pages that they will go on to transform or destroy by the end; they are harbingers of mortality, telling us that we are going to die. (The eerie images of the denuded bookcases in Florida feel ticklishly apt.) Turning the page of a text, “we feel instantly youthful,” the unnamed narrator of “ Checkout 19 ,” a novel by Claire-Louise Bennett , thinks. But, “by the time we get to the bottom of the right page, we have aged approximately twenty years. . . . The book has dropped. Our face has dropped. We have jowls.”

Knowledge is power, but it can also age you, make you vulnerable and afraid. Wishing to protect children from the realities of adult life—grubby, earthbound, disappointing—for at least a little while is deeply human. Kids mature at different rates, and it’s not unreasonable for the parents of twelve-year-olds to want to keep their own children from reading the same books as eighteen-year-olds.

But a glance at the list of most frequently banned books makes clear that “mature content” is a fig leaf: what parents and advocacy groups are challenging in these books is difference itself. In their vision of childhood—a green, sweet-smelling land invented by Victorians and untouched by violence, or discrimination, or death—white, straight, and cisgender characters are G-rated. All other characters, meanwhile, come with warning labels. When childhood is racialized, cisgendered, and de-queered, insisting on “age-appropriate material” becomes a way to instill doctrine and foreclose options for some readers, and to evict other readers from childhood entirely.

The recent wave of bans comes as many Republicans, in their opposition to gun control, climate science, food stamps, public education, and other social services, work assiduously to render the lives of American children as unchildlike as possible. A number of grownups apparently feel emboldened to spend their lives playing peekaboo with reality. Their kids may not have that luxury. ♦

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By Lauren Michele Jackson

By Jessica Winter

Book Bans Are Targeting the History of Oppression

The possibility of a more just future is at stake when young people are denied access to knowledge of the past.

The instinct to ban books in schools seems to come from a desire to protect children from things that the adults doing the banning find upsetting or offensive. These adults often seem unable to see beyond harsh language or gruesome imagery to the books’ educational and artistic value, or to recognize that language and imagery may be integral to showing the harsh, gruesome truths of the books’ subjects. That appears to be what’s happening with Art Spiegelman’s Maus —a Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic-novel series about the author’s father’s experience of the Holocaust that a Tennessee school board recently pulled from an eighth-grade language-arts curriculum, citing the books’ inappropriate language and nudity.

The Maus case is one of the latest in a series of school book bans targeting books that teach the history of oppression. So far during this school year alone, districts across the U.S. have banned many anti-racist instructional materials as well as best-selling and award-winning books that tackle themes of racism and imperialism. For example, Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race was pulled by a Pennsylvania school board, along with other resources intended to teach students about diversity, for being “too divisive,” according to the York Dispatch . (The decision was later reversed.) Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, about the effects of racism on a young Black girl’s self-image, has recently been removed from shelves in school districts in Missouri and Florida (the latter of which also banned her book Beloved ). What these bans are doing is censoring young people’s ability to learn about historical and ongoing injustices.

Read: How banning books marginalizes children

For decades, U.S. classrooms and education policy have incorporated the teaching of Holocaust literature and survivor testimonies, the goal being to “never forget.” Maus is not the only book about the Holocaust to get caught up in recent debates on curriculum materials. In October, a Texas school-district administrator invoked a law that requires teachers to present opposing viewpoints to “widely debated and currently controversial issues,” instructing teachers to present opposing views about the Holocaust in their classrooms. Books such as Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars , a Newbery Medal winner about a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis to avoid being taken to a concentration camp, and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl have been flagged as inappropriate in the past, for language and sexual content . But perhaps no one foresaw a day when it would be suggested that there could be a valid opposing view of the Holocaust.

In the Tennessee debate over Maus , one school-board member was quoted as saying, “It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy .” This is a familiar argument from those who seek to keep young people from reading about history’s horrors. But children, especially children of color and those who are members of ethnic minorities, were not sheltered or spared from these horrors when they happened. What’s more, the sanitization of history in the name of shielding children assumes, incorrectly, that today’s students are untouched by oppression, imprisonment, death, or racial and ethnic profiling. (For example, Tennessee has been a site of controversy in recent years for incarcerating children as young as 7 and disrupting the lives of undocumented youth .)

The possibility of a more just future is at stake when book bans deny young people access to knowledge of the past. For example, Texas legislators recently argued that coursework and even extracurriculars must remain separate from “political activism” or “public policy advocacy.” They seem to think the purpose of public education is so-called neutrality—rather than cultivating informed participants in democracy.

Maus and many other banned books that grapple with the history of oppression show readers how personal prejudice can become the law. The irony is that in banning books that make them uncomfortable, adults are wielding their own prejudices as a weapon, and students will suffer for it.

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Banned Books - Rodems: Evaluation

• Finding Banned Books
• Research Guide
• The Proposal

Writing the Assessment

Evaluation (full instructions)

Due Date : Thursday/Friday February 16, 17 by the end of your class period to your Illinois.publish work page.

Your Audience : Your classmates, parents, me, and the public.

Your Purpose : A rgue for the validity or invalidity of the arguments against the book which are the arguments for banning the book. You are stating your reasoned opinion of the book’s challenge/ban. You have researched the issues involved with your book. You have read it yourself to form your own opinion. In the evaluation, you share your expertise. 

Evaluation Required Content:

• Summary of the Novel: The idea here is to illustrate to the reader you know the book well enough to tell them the important plot elements they would need in order to understand your evaluation. The summary portion of the evaluation should not be more than one paragraph . Consider which details the reader will need to know in order to follow your upcoming evaluation.
• Challenge Information : Provide detailed information about who, when, where, why, and how the book has been challenged or banned. Follow the challenges by researching through the databases, in particular the newspaper articles, to find primary sources discussing the challenges. Most of you will be able to find this information.
• Your Argument : You judge the validity of the arguments against it and the quality of the book. You will need to support your argument for both the quality of the book and the validity of the arguments.
• Thesis Statement : Your educated and reasoned opinion of the book should be the THESIS STATEMENT in addition to whether you agree or disagree with the challenge. You should ultimately make a claim about whether the good parts of the novel outweigh the bad, the bad outweighs the good, or somewhere in between those two ideas.  
• Position on the Challenge: Directly respond to the book’s challenges. Do you agree with the challenge? Why or why not? Are there portions of the challenge you agree with? Why or why not? Why should readers be able to read this book, or why should they be prevented from reading the book? What might they gain or not gain from reading the book or not reading the book? If relevant, consider our discussions of the “ Freedom to Read Statement.”
• Quality of the Book : You will offer your educated and reasoned opinion of the book’s quality: is it entertaining and enjoyable to read—why or why not? You should speak to what the book has to offer – or does not have to offer. Use your knowledge of literary elements as well as your understanding of the value – or lack of – the book. What makes this book valuable?  You can certainly write about developed characters and an interesting plot, but you should also discuss what this book have to offer it’s audiences.
• You should support your opinion of the quality by using the credible opinions of others. You will draw upon outside sources such as literary criticism and published book reviews. Use what materials you can to convince the reader. You could use comments from newspaper articles, Novelist, Literature Resource Center, or other published book reviews from newspapers. 
• Counter Argument : At some point in the evaluation, you should directly present the counterargument to your position. In this portion of the evaluation, you should write about the following: what do you think is motivating the challengers or the supporters of the novel? Try to both explain and understand their perspective. What do they hope to gain from having the book removed or kept on the shelf? Can you relate to their perspective? **Then you then must respond to this counterargument with a rebuttal with evidence and explanation. Ex: However, while this position is….it ultimately…
• You are required to support your evaluation with sources you find on the library class project page.
• Acceptable sources to use: Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Hitlist, Banned Books Reference Series, Newsbank, Lexis Nexis, ProQuest, Novelist, and the Literature Resource Center. **If you are unable to find sources through these options, YOU MUST talk to Ms. Arnold or me before seeking out other resources. NO EXCEPTIONS.   

Format : Formal, double spaced, regular 12-point font, MLA format. The evaluation does not need a traditional introduction and conclusion (although it could include them)­­­­; however, it does need a thesis statement that makes a claim about the value of the book.  

Length : 3-5 pages

Documentation : The use of outside sources means the evaluation must have  documentation. Use MLA format, in-text documentation, and include a “Works Cited” page at the end that meets MLA standards. Give the evaluation an original title and use the MLA heading.

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• URL: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/bannedbooks

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Bills targeting book bans raise concerns about the penalties libraries could face

Bills against book bans are gaining traction in state legislatures around the country — and with them have come worries about the potentially negative impact on libraries themselves.

The number of banned books across the country saw an almost two-thirds increase in 2023 from the previous year, to more than 4,200 titles, according to a new report from the American Library Association . The free speech advocacy group PEN America found that last school year, about 30% of the book titles being challenged in schools included characters of color or discussed race and racism, while another 30% presented LGBTQ characters or themes. In addition, almost half the banned books featured themes or instances of violence or physical abuse, and a third contained writing on sexual experiences between characters.

The rise in book bans has prompted lawmakers to push back with bills in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico. They follow Illinois and California, where such legislation has been signed into law.

Experts are raising concerns, however, as some of the legislation would fine school districts or withhold library funding if their provisions are not followed, such as in Illinois and California. The enforcement measures could especially be a threat to public schools and libraries that are underfunded and understaffed, they say.

“It always is a concern when you put funding on the line for any reason,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“We would not want to see bills that are overly prescriptive that make it difficult for smaller communities or rural communities to receive their funding."

She added, "Our big concern is not creating a system that would make it so onerous to comply with the bill that it makes it difficult for libraries with fewer resources."

Budgetary constraints also can give rise to circumstances that could be misread as violations of state laws, experts say. For example, titles may be removed or go missing from the shelves of schools or public libraries when the books are damaged or lost or there’s no money in the budget to purchase them. Personnel shortages also can prevent libraries from staffing panels that review books or instructional materials for approval or disapproval. Some experts argued that such problems could be unfairly weaponized against schools or public libraries, which have experienced increased criticism and scrutiny as part of the growing movement to ban books.

Illinois’ new law requires that state libraries adopt the American Library Association’s long-standing Library Bill of Rights, which says that reading materials cannot be banned, removed or restricted due to "partisan or doctrinal disapproval," or, alternatively, a similar statement prohibiting the banning of books. If public libraries don’t adopt such guidelines, they become ineligible for state grant money, which makes up a substantial part of their budgets.

When asked about the concerns over the law, Illinois state Sen. Laura Murphy, a Democrat who co-sponsored the measure, said in a statement to NBC News that by adding the threat to funding to the legislation, lawmakers were "intentional in establishing a mechanism to hold libraries accountable and sending a clear message that there would be a recourse for those who seek to ban books."

She added that the law's enforcement gave it more of a backbone and was a way to "further demonstrate our support for librarians” who back efforts to keep an inclusive range of book titles available.

Emily Knox, an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said that she believes connecting funding to Illinois’ bill is necessary for its effectiveness.

“That’s what gives the bill any teeth at all,” she said. “Libraries and schools need more money, but because funding is so precious to public institutions, you don’t want to do things that jeopardize the possibility of getting funding from a source like the state. So it does make a big difference.”

Knox said claims that the funding could be weaponized against libraries in the state if they are targeted for not having certain titles on the shelf are inaccurate based on the wording of the legislation.

“The bill says that [libraries] have to support the ALA Bill of Rights and have a process in place for reconsidering books. It doesn’t say what the outcome of that process is,” she said.

Since the Illinois bill just mandates the policy to taken up by libraries, rather than specifying what specific books should or shouldn't be on the shelves, libraries can’t be targeted for lacking book titles, Knox said.

And the law is already proving effective, she said, noting that the director of the public library in Metropolis, Illinois, was dismissed last month in part for challenging the library board’s decision to conform to the state’s law and adopt the ALA Bill of Rights, which the board said was necessary to do in order to receive state grants that the library needs.

California’s law focuses on penalizing school districts if books are determined to have been rejected from their library shelves for discriminatory reasons, which would result in financial penalties from the state Education Department. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the law aims to protect access to books which “reflect the diverse experiences and perspectives of Californians.”

Caldwell-Stone warned that in a national environment in which librarians face growing criticism about the types of books they provide, laws against book bans must consider the potential pitfalls and burdens on library staff.

Some state lawmakers have reconsidered the inclusion of financial penalties for libraries in their bills amid the fears of unintended consequences. In New Jersey, legislators dropped that language from their bill after librarians expressed concerns.

State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat who sponsored the b ill , said that he grew concerned about the potential impact of such penalties after hearing from several librarians about the criticism and scrutiny they've received amid the increasing challenges to various book titles.

Washington and Oregon have advanced legislation against book bans that focus on school districts, but neither includes fines like California's law. Washington’s bill is waiting for Gov. Jay Inslee’s expected signature, and Oregon’s measure has been passed by the state Senate.

Both bills would prohibit the exclusion of instructional materials for including information on the role or contributions of individuals and groups protected from discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics.

Washington state Rep. Monica Stonier and Oregon state Sen. Lew Frederick, Democrats who introduced their respective bills, explained that their measures would simply enact vetting processes for books that are already being used in school districts across the state, unifying those district protocols while adding anti-discriminatory protections.

Lawmakers in support of the laws in Washington and Oregon say that they plan to see how California’s enforcement provisions play out before considering adding a fine to their bills.

“We already have a way to do this, there doesn’t seem to be a need to set up another one,” Frederick said. “I think this is a simple approach because it just says you can’t discriminate."

Kyla Guilfoil is an intern for NBC News Digital Politics.

• Entertainment

How SPL’s Books Unbanned card is fighting censorship

Book censorship, bans and restrictions remain a pressing challenge for youth across the country, according to a Books Unbanned report released Wednesday by the Seattle Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library. 

The report comes as public libraries saw a 92% rise in books targeted for censorship between 2022 to 2023 while school libraries saw an 11% increase, according to a March report from the American Library Association. In 2023, ALA saw more than 4,200 titles targeted for censorship, a 65% increase from 2022.

BPL founded the Books Unbanned program in 2022 to combat that censorship by expanding digital access to its collections to U.S. youth. Since SPL joined the program in 2023 , more than 8,000 young people across the United States signed up for a SPL Books Unbanned card to check out a range of books, including titles banned or censored in their own communities. So far, cardholders ages 13 to 26 have checked out 137,000 digital books, according to SPL representatives. (SPL’s program is privately funded by The Seattle Public Library Foundation.) 

Report findings reveal that bans and attempts to censor or restrict books have created a “climate of fear and intimidation” for youth. In the report, over 800 youth from across the country shared stories of books being locked up or unavailable, librarians criticizing their checkouts and limiting collections of books young people want to read. Their experiences also shed light on the impact of quiet or soft censorship , in which youth have lost access to books due to personal safety concerns, as well as librarians removing books to avoid controversy. 

“Censorship is not just what we read about in terms of legislation or formal book banning,” said Bo Kinney, SPL’s circulation services manager. “There’s all kinds of examples of this where books just aren’t available because of fear that checking out a certain book or having a book and taking it home might put you in harm’s way.” 

According to the report, books about the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, reproductive health and racial and social justice are more at risk of being targeted by censorship or challenges. But for LGBTQ+ youth and people of color, these restrictions exacerbated feelings of isolation and discrimination, the report showed. 

“[There] are some books that I want to read but because they are too explicitly gay, I was told by the librarian at my local library that even if it becomes one of their most requested books the library would never even consider them,” wrote a 20-year-old Washington resident, according to the report. 

Young people from across the country also lost access to books because of transportation issues, lack of accessibility or not having a local library in their community. For some youths, digital books provide a sense of safety.  

“A lot of people have told us that they may have a bookstore where they could go buy a book and carry it around, but they’re afraid to do that,” Kinney said. “But being able to access the book for free on their phone or on their device and have that confidentiality has made a huge difference in their life.” 

Book bans have been widespread in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina, according to PEN America’s 2022-2023 Index of School Book Bans . In Washington, there were 13 attempts to restrict access to books and 35 titles challenged in those attempts, according to the American Library Association. The organization’s top 10 most challenged books of 2023 include Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and Juno Dawson’s “This Book is Gay,” among other titles. 

But the Books Unbanned report also offers an uplifting message, says SPL’s Kinney: “Young people want books.” 

“They want to be able to choose the books that they want to read,” Kinney said. “They don’t want someone telling them what they can and can’t have access to.” 

SPL’s Chief Librarian Tom Fay underscored the importance of libraries taking action to uphold intellectual freedom and fight against policies that restrict youth’s access to information. 

“Getting more libraries together is what we need,” Fay said. “The way to combat censorship and book banning is to make sure there’s more [books] out there than they can ban.” 

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ALA kicks off National Library Week revealing the annual list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books and the State of America’s Libraries Report

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For Immediate Release Mon, 04/08/2024

Raymond Garcia

Communications Specialist

Communications, Marketing & Media Relation Office

[email protected]

CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA) launched National Library Week with today’s release of its highly anticipated annual list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023 and the  State of America’s Libraries Report,  which highlights the ways libraries and library workers have taken action to address community needs with innovative and critical services, as well as the challenges brought on by censorship attempts.

The number of unique titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by ALA.

“In looking at the titles of the most challenged books from last year, it’s obvious that the pressure groups are targeting books about LGBTQIA+ people and people of color,” said ALA President Emily Drabinski. “At ALA, we are fighting for the freedom to choose what you want to read. Shining a light on the harmful workings of these pressure groups is one of the actions we must take to protect our right to read.”

Below are the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023:

• “ Gender Queer ,” by Maia Kobabe

Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

• “ All Boys Aren’t Blue ,” by George M. Johnson
• “ This Book is Gay ,” by Juno Dawson

Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit

• “ The Perks of Being a Wallflower ,” by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, rape, drugs, profanity

• “ Flamer ,” by Mike Curato
• “ The Bluest Eye ,” by Toni Morrison

Reasons: Rape, incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content

• (TIE) “ Tricks ,” by Ellen Hopkins

Reasons:  Claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs, rape, LGBTQIA+ content

• (TIE) “ Me and Earl and the Dying Girl ,” by Jesse Andrews

Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity

• “ Let's Talk About It ,” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan

Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, sex education, LGBTQIA+ content

• “ Sold ,” by Patricia McCormick

Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, rape

Top 10 artwork is available for download at: https://bit.ly/ALA-Top10

The Top 10 Books are featured in Unite Against Book Bans’ Book Résumé resource. Launched in February , these résumés support librarians, educators, parents, students, and other community advocates when they defend books from censorship. Created in collaboration with the publishing industry and library workers, each book résumé summarizes the book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades and more. Where possible, the book résumés also include information about how a title has been successfully retained in school districts and libraries after a demand to censor the book.

“These are books that contain the ideas, the opinions, and the voices that censors want to silence – stories by and about LGBTQ+ persons and people of color,” said ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone. “Each challenge, each demand to censor these books is an attack on our freedom to read, our right to live the life we choose, and an attack on libraries as community institutions that reflect the rich diversity of our nation. When we tolerate censorship, we risk losing all of this. During National Library Week, we should all take action to protect and preserve libraries and our rights.”

Today is also the second anniversary of Right to Read Day , a day of action launched by Unite Against Book Bans that takes place the Monday of National Library Week. This year’s theme is “Don’t Let Censorship Eclipse Your Freedom to Read,” and anyone who supports the right to read is encouraged to take action today by contacting Congress.

ALA is also pleased to debut the theme for Banned Books Week 2024, “Freed Between the Lines,” which honors the ways in which books bring us freedom and that access to information is worth preserving.  Banned Books Week will take place September 22-28, 2024.

About the American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the library’s role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all. For more information, visit www.ala.org .

Hanover County School Board says content in the Bible does not violate its library materials criteria

H ANOVER COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Hanover County Public Schools’ list of banned books includes more than 70 pieces of literature. After a unanimous School Board meeting vote Tuesday night , the Bible is not going to join them.

In recent years, the appointed Hanover County School Board has taken an increasingly hands-on approach to monitoring literature permitted in schools . Concerns were voiced about “inappropriate language,” “violence” and “sexually explicit content,” forcing dozens and dozens of books off of school library shelves.

While works like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Glass Castle” were banned , the Christian New International Version (NIV) Bible remained permitted — and Tuesday night’s Hanover County School Board vote solidified that decision.

Board member Steve Ikenberry spoke at the meeting. He explained that, not only can the Bible be educational, but it is mandated reading in certain course curricula.

“It is educational to have a reference to a faith,” Ikenberry said, in part.

A spokesperson for Hanover County Public Schools sent the following statement to 8News providing further details:

“Mr. Ikenberry referenced the Standards of Learning for history and social studies, and the inclusion of various religions in the state learning standards. Those standards, including the Grade 9 World History and Geography to 1500 that were referenced, can be found  on the Virginia Department of Education’s website .” Hanover County Public Schools

One particular attendee at Tuesday night’s meeting didn’t take the podium to speak, but held up a sign championing separation of church and state. Board members shut such protests down quickly.

“This is your warning,” a board member said. “No more outbursts from you.”

The following is the comment of board member John Redd, Jr. that prompted that attendee’s protest:

“We just don’t want to disrespect God,” Redd said. “Those of you that don’t agree with me, that’s fine. You can disagree with me, but you don’t want to make an enemy of God. And, you know, I’m afraid that if we disrespect God, we could we could forfeit some of his blessings and the protection he provides for us.”

One Hanover County resident told 8News that she feels this recent decision emphasized how the Hanover County School Board is capable of recognizing the value of certain texts when looked at as a whole .

She added that other banned books were evaluated on a more narrow basis and were, essentially, judged solely by certain controversial excerpts.

A representative of Hanover County’s Library Materials Committee — the group that initially received and evaluated the inquiry about the Bible’s place in school libraries — explained that the Bible (NIV) was looked at specifically regarding sexual content and the committee didn’t find anything to warrant the book’s removal.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, another board member brought up the fact that certain courses also require Judaism and Islam be taught and that those religions’ corresponding texts are currently permitted.

A spokesperson with Hanover County Public Schools clarified they cannot confirm exactly which texts are currently in stock and available to students. His statement read, in part, “We cannot immediately speak to every book in our 25 comprehensive libraries.”

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