If you listened to the American Library Association (ALA) you would think that contingents of Nazis are storming local and school libraries, hauling out mountains of books, piling them up in parking lots and setting them on fire. To push back against this atrocity, the ALA promotes its annual “Banned Book Week” to raise the consciousness of the uninformed public.
Ridiculous.
Banned Book Week is an annual event promoted by the American Library Association (ALA) during the last full week of September. It was founded in 1982 by Judith Krug, a librarian who served as the director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom for 40 years, starting in 1967. She also founded the Freedom to Read Foundation in 1969 and served as its executive director.
The original Banned Book Week was prompted by a complaint to Krug in 1982 by the Association of American Publishers, concerned about an increasing number of “book bans” that year. My guess is that the publishers were concerned that complaints about the books they were publishing would hurt their sales.
This year the ALA wrote on its website:
“As we gear up for Banned Books Week 2024 (September 22-28), with the theme ‘Freed Between the Lines,’ we’re reminded how much is at stake. The freedom to explore new ideas and different perspectives is under threat, and book bans don’t just restrict access to stories—they undermine our rights. Now is the time to come together, celebrate the right to read, and find freedom in the pages of a book. Let’s be ‘Freed Between the Lines.’
According to ALA officials, the top ten books targeted by the book banners in 2023 were the following:
Is there a movement to ban these and hundreds of other books? The answer is quite simple: NO.
It is a lie.
The American Library Association has defined any effort to restrict access to any book based on a person’s age as an improper effort to ban the book. The ALA published its “Interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights.” The section titled “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” states:
“Library policies and procedures that effectively deny minors equal and equitable access to all library resources available to other users violate the Library Bill of Rights. The American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.”
In other words, the ALA thinks any book or other material available to adults in the library’s collection should be accessible to any child of any age. If the library has the Kama Sutra, a child should be able to read it without any supervision. If an adult can look up porn on the library computer, so should an 11-year-old.
This policy applies to public libraries, private libraries and school libraries.
Is this reasonable?
Let’s look at the books the ALA says are the “top ten targeted by the book banners.” Anyone can use a resource called “Book Looks” to find out the objections to almost any book that has become subject to a complaint. In addition to a summary of concerns for each book, there are extensive examples of the offending passages. This is what we find for each of the ten books:
#1 GENDER QUEER
Adult Graphic Novel By Maia Kobabe (ISBN: 978-1-713-70105-7)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains obscene sexual activities and sexual nudity; alternate gender ideologies; and profanity.
#2 ALL BOYS AREN’T BLUE
By George M. Johnson (ISBN:978-0-374-31271-8)
Young Adult Book Summary: A gay black man remembers his turbulent childhood and adolescence.
Summary of Concerns: This book contains sexual nudity; sexual activities including sexual assault; alternate gender ideologies; profanity and derogatory terms; alcohol and drug use; and controversial racial commentary.
#3 THIS BOOK IS GAY
By Juno Dawson (ISBN: 978-1492617822)
Young Adult Summary of Concerns: This book contains excerpts and illustrations depicting explicit nudity and sexual activities.
#4 THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER
By Stephen Chbosky (ISBN: 978-1-4516-9620-2 978-1-4391-2243-3)
Young Adult Summary of Concerns: This book contains sexual activities including assault and battery; sexual nudity; profanity; violence; alcohol and drug use.
#5 FLAMER
Young Adult Graphic Novel By Mike Curato (ISBN: 978-1-62779-641-5)
Book Summary: A young teenage Boy Scout is bullied while coming to grips with his homosexuality and its religious implications.
Summary of Concerns: This book contains alternate sexualities; sexual activities; sexual nudity; profanity and derogatory term; violence including self- harm; and controversial religious commentary.
#6 THE BLUEST EYE
By Toni Morrison (ISBN: 9780307386588)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains profanity and derogatory terms; sexual activities including sexual assault and molestation; alcohol use; inflammatory racial and religious commentary and references.
#7/8 TRICKS
By Ellen Hopkins (ISBN: 978-1-4814-9824-1)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains sexually explicit excerpts involving minors. There are also excerpts containing explicit child rape and abuse; illegal drug abuse; graphic violence; underage alcohol consumption; and adult and child prostitution.
#7/8 ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
By Jesse Andrews (ISBN: 978-1-4197-0176-4)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains inexplicit sexual nudity; sexual activities; and excessive/frequent profanity and derogatory terms.
#9 LET’S TALK ABOUT IT
By Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan (ISBN: 9781984893147)
Graphic Novel
Summary of Concerns: This book contains obscene sexual illustrations and commentary; obscene sexual nudity; profanity; and alternate gender ideologies.
#10 SOLD
By Patricia McCormick (ISBN: 978-0786851720)
Book Summary: A young girl is sold into the sex slave trade to pay off her family’s debt. Summary of Concerns: This contains explicit aberrant sexual activities including rape of a minor; prostitution; and explicit violence.
Parents should use the BookLook resource to learn more about what their children are being assigned to read. Or better yet, they should screen the books themselves before allowing their children to read them. Don’t be fooled by the claim that concerns about vulgar and obscene content are tantamount to Nazi book banning.
Another resource is very useful to parents as well, a Follet website that allows anyone to see what books are part of the collection of almost every public school library in the country. Using these websites together will help make your case to school boards to get these obscene books out of the collection. If they refuse, you can run for those positions yourself. You can use these sites to make the case that the current board members are indifferent to protecting childhood innocence and should be replaced.
The top ten books are not the only books that are problems. There are some others that have been brought up as examples of books that should not be in school libraries or accessible to children in public libraries. Books like Crank, Beloved, and the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are in many of our school libraries as are those listed in the top ten. There are hundreds of others as well. Let’s look at these three:
CRANK
By Ellen Hopkins (ISBN: 978-1442471818)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains explicit sexual activities; sexual battery; profanity; and drug abuse.
BELOVED
By Toni Morrison (ISBN: 0-8124-7213-6)
Book Summary: A former slave woman recalls her life in slavery.
Summary of concerns: This book contains sexual activities; beastiality commentary; violence; racial commentary; profanity; and derogatory terms.
THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN
By Sherman Alexie (ISBN: 978-0-316-21930-3)
Summary of Concerns: This book contains inexplicit sexual nudity; inflammatory racial commentary; references to racism; and profanity.
According to the ALA, every child of any age should be able to read any of the books listed above without restriction. Any effort to restrict access by age is, by their definition, banning the books.
These librarians need to be reminded that children do not have the same rights of access to information, stories, pornography, or adult content of any kind as do adults. These and many other inappropriate books are in our schools. Find out which ones are in your local schools and take action to get them out. Protecting childhood innocence is a requirement to raise healthy children. The ALA librarians are intentionally trying to undermine that innocence.
Don’t let them.
