- Here’s the transcript from 60 Minutes’s interview with Moms For Liberty. It’s more important that most of the books pulled in Beaufort County Schools (SC) — but not all! — are back on shelf.
- In West Virginia, where a bill to criminalize librarians and educators over “obscene material” has stalled, something changed. They added that bill into a bill targeting AI child porn, which is a very popular bill with legislators.
- A principal at Haywood County Schools (NC) elected to ban Dear Martin from classrooms after one parent complained. Bonus points to reporting that tries to legitimize the complaint via swear counting on Common Sense Media. This story is from the end of January and just emerged in this week’s news search.
- In a story that made dozens of headlines and is the wet dream of right-wingers itching to scream book bans on the left, several “classics” in Surrey Schools (British Columbia, Canada) will not be used in curriculum anymore. They include To Kill a Mockingbird. Guess what, though? It’s not a book ban because the books are still available in the classrooms, and teachers can still get permission to teach them. This is called a curriculum update, not a book ban. The books were not physically or digitally removed.
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- “A children’s book is facing some backlash from residents in the Hanover area. The Family Book was read during toddler storytime at the Atlee Branch Library. It contained themes that offended some parents so much that they got up and left the event. They then went to a county supervisor who agreed it wasn’t appropriate.” This is a public library in Virginia…conveniently in the same area as massive bans in the school district. It does not stay in one place.
- No, we’re not rebranding book bans as “intellectual freedom” challenges.
- Fluvanna County High School Library (VA) is evaluating 11 books that the crisis actors complained about.
- Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. (IN) will decide whether or not to ban People Kill People this week. The book will remain on shelves.
- South Western School Board (PA) will soon take up a vote on whether parents get to decide whether or not their student will read any book assigned in class. This week the board voted to allow misgendering students because fuck the kids, right?
- Louisiana legislators, not satisfied with how much they’ve ruined the state already, are proposing to remove obscenity law exemptions from schools and libraries. Worth reiterating that no such obscenity exists in either place, but okay.
- The status of the four books challenged in Palm Beach County Schools (FL) this school year.
- How the movement to ban books is silencing sexual assault and rape.
- “The parents who compiled the document object to Clint Smith’s 2017 book Counting Descent, for instance, because it allegedly glorifies police brutality, justifies the Black Lives Matter movement and ignores the context of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. They write that the book omits that Brown ‘was a drug dealer with a record’ as if that might justify his killing. […] But it’s not just mentions of race and racism that are deemed objectionable; the parents take issue with virtually any difficult subject. In Flannery O’Connor’s renowned short story ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ (1953), the treatment of topics such as murder, sin, selfishness and guilt are, according to these parents, of grave concern.” This is out of Granite Bay High School in California.
- The Letter Q will be restricted to high school students in Pasco County Schools (FL).
- The Oklahoma State Department of Education, who informed Edmonds Public Schools that they needed to ban The Glass Castle and The Kite Runner, agreed not to enforce that ban until the state supreme court ruled in the case brought to it by the school.
- “Sadie Matteucci, a teacher at Gainesville High School, said she had learned the number of book challenges has reached 25, and that those challenges come from six people. Matteucci chastised the board for allowing these challenges and the removal of books from school media centers.” The book is It Feels Good to Be Yourself and it will be returned to shelves in Alachua County, Florida, schools.
- Eight books that Northview Public Schools (MI) elected not to ban are back on the agenda this week since the Moms For Liberty member who initially complained did not like the outcome and is petitioning it. The books will not be removed.
- San Ramon Valley Schools (CA) have been hearing from homophobic community members via performances of “dirty book” passages at board meetings for MONTHS now.
- “The Chino Valley Unified School District board [CA] is considering a new policy that could remove books with ‘sexually obscene content’ from school libraries, classrooms, and all other district facilities.” A reminder that California passed a bill making school boards banning books against the law, but what that matters is zero.
- Fremont County Public Library in Wyoming will not be banning two Ellen Hopkins books: Tricks and Smoke.
- Stratford Public Schools (CT) might cut all of the remaining librarian positions in the district.
- “This concern arose when The Palmer Police Department had members of the public asking for the police to arrest the Palmer Public Librarians citing the Alaska criminal code defining ‘Distributions of obscene materials to minors.’” Okay then, “we don’t coparent with the government” means “we go to the police.”
