“A year ago, we might have been receiving one, maybe two reports a day about a book being challenged at a library. And usually those calls would be for guidance on how to handle a challenge or for materials that support the value of the work being challenged,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom-Stone told The Associated Press.
Now, that same library is getting four or five calls a day relating to book banning and attempted book bannings.
Public schools across the nation are finding that as a result of conservative-led school boards and some proposed legislation, books like Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir, “Gender Queer,” and Jonathan Evison’s “Lawn Boy,” may soon become scarce from student libraries.
The Guardian similarly reports that "more than 1,500 book bans have been instituted in US school districts in the last nine months" attributing the bans to a "rightwing censorship effort described as 'unparalleled in its intensity.'"
Reports show that the bans disproportionately impact books written by non-white or LGBTQ authors as well as books that center around subjects like race or other issues that can be deemed "controversial."
"This is an orchestrated attack on book whose subjects only recently gained a foothold on school library shelves and in classrooms... We are witnessing the erasure of topics that only recently represented progress towards inclusion," Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America's Free Expression and Education said in his interview with The Guardian.
The American Library Association urges readers to take a stand against the banning of books as a way to "celebrate free expression and show their communities the importance of intellectual freedom."
ALA gives readers a list of things you can do to fight censorship efforts that includes staying informed, attending a Banned Books Week program, writing a letter to the editor and more.
As the author of Bookends, I also urge you to fight the banning of books in libraries. For some of these students, these books are the first time they are seeing themselves represented in literature that is accessible. Do not let this be taken away from them.
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