News & Features

Pat Scales answers readers' questions and shows how successful defenses of free speech pay off.

This digital resource created by Penguin Random House is freely browsable. It provides broad community encouragement and support for resisting book challenges in school and public libraries, as well as links to a host of additional resources and advocacy groups.

They care deeply and can't be fired. Retired librarians are bringing experience and passion to the cause of intellectual freedom. With advocacy skills training and opportunities to mentor, retirees could become even more powerful assets.

Censorship is delaying the delivery of books to school library shelves. Cue the civics lesson.

Librarians, individuals, and grassroots organizations are on the offensive against censorship attempts.

The director of the Florida Freedom to Read Project discusses expectations for 2024, plus a look at new book-related laws for 2024, a Massachusetts police chief apologizes for an officer searching for a book at middle school, and the story of a Russian librarian who called out the fascism of removing LGBTQIA+ books.

From censorship and AI to book fairs and the state of middle grade publishing, it's been an eventful year. Among those driving SLJ's most viewed posts of 2023: Jeff Kinney, Moms for Liberty, and stellar librarians. Ah, and those Best Books.

A complaint to the police sent a plainclothes officer to the school in Great Barrington, MA, but Gender Queer was not there; hundreds of books get removed in a Florida district; and Books Save Lives Act was introduced in Congress.

Central Bucks County (PA) School Board president Karen Smith shares the backstory to getting sworn in on a stack of frequently challenged books and the reason for each title selected.