Censorship

The Tucson, Arizona, school board on Tuesday voted 3-2 to reintroduce seven books by Latino and Native American writers to the curriculum as supplementary classroom materials, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) announced today. The books had been removed from the curriculum two years ago when the district dissolved its acclaimed Mexican American Studies program.

A parent at Watauga High School in Boone, North Carolina, has challenged the use of Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits (Knopf, 1982) in the school’s English curriculum and is asking the Board of Education to consider its removal from the district, local newspaper the Watauga Democrat has reported.

Neil Gaiman's bestselling urban fantasy novel Neverwhere is still available to students at the library at New Mexico’s Alamogordo High School, despite recent news reports that it is “banned,” the school’s librarian and media specialist Vicki Bertolino tells SLJ. The district is currently accepting written public comments ahead of its planned review of the book’s literary merit.

The Kids’ Right to Read Project (KRRP) announced that it has urged New Mexico’s Alamogordo Public School district to return Neil Gaiman’s urban fantasy novel Neverwhere to high school English classrooms.

Neil Gaiman's dark urban fantasy novel Neverwhere has been removed from both the school library and the required reading list at Alamogordo (NM) High School this week following the complaint of one parent, who objected to its sexual innuendos and "harsh" language, according to a report by New Mexico's local KRQE news station.

While Gary Soto seems a bit of a fragile flower in this essay about why he’s been scared off writing for children, I have sympathy for him. If your book is sexy or foul-mouthed or anti-authority, you have no better friends than the American Library Association and its adjacent professions. They will–and they should–stick up [...]

The post Now you’re telling us? appeared first on The Horn Book.

A group of Colorado parents are challenging the use of John Green’s award-winning young adult novel Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005) in 9th grade classrooms, the author wrote on his Tumblr-based blog yesterday. Green is urging supporters to write in solidarity with the teachers and librarians at the school, Fort Lupton Middle and High School, who he says are "heroically" standing by their choice.

The exciting news this week was that I got to host a couple panels regarding Banned Books (it being the week of ‘em and all).  The first was at the Brooklyn Book Festival with David Levithan, Francesca Lia Block, and Lauren Myracle.  I then cannibalized my own questions and used them in this, a Google+ [...]

Since 1982, Banned Books Week has been an annual opportunity during the last week of September for librarians and other freedom fighters around the country to celebrate banned and challenged books, shine a spotlight on censorship, and honor those heroes working for open access to materials and the right to read for all. This year’s campaign is proceeding in some unique and wonderful ways. How are you marking the occasion?