Libraries and schools across the country are experiencing unprecedented levels of attempts to ban or remove books from their shelves. I Love Libraries will continue to raise awareness by highlighting attempts to censor library materials, as well as efforts by librarians, parents, students, and concerned citizens to push back against them. This report includes news from Alabama, Iowa, and Texas, and “The Kite Runner” author’s reaction to his book being banned in Minnesota schools.
Texas lawmakers advance bill that makes it a crime for teachers to assign literature classics
Lawmakers in Texas are seeking to impose harsh criminal penalties on school librarians and teachers who provide award-winning works of literature, reports Popular Information.
Identical bills in the Texas Senate (SB 412) and House (HB 267) would make it a crime for librarians and teachers to provide books or learning materials that contain sexually explicit content, punishable by up to 10 years behind bars — whether or not a book has educational or literary merit.
Currently, if someone is charged with providing sexually explicit content to a child, they can argue that the content was provided in pursuit of a scientific, educational, or governmental purpose. This defense exists because, while some people provide explicit content to children to harm them, books that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including “The Odyssey,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Brave New World,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” have sexually explicit scenes. The Texas bills would remove this affirmative defense.
Alabama board defunds local library in first action under new book ban law
Fairhope (Ala.) Public Library is in the crosshairs of battles over library content, reports The Guardian.
The Alabama public library service board of trustees has voted to withhold state funding from the libary after complaints from conservative parents about books in the teen section. The board also voted to immediately dismiss the executive director of the state library agency, who had been planning to resign.
The board chairperson—who is also chair of the Alabama Republica Party—said board members believe the library is in violation of state policies to protect children from inappropriate materials. The books that have been cited by the upset parents include “Sold,” a National Book Award finalist about a girl who is sold into sexual slavery in India. The library’s defunding is the first measure taken under a new Alabama law and 2024 administrative code changes that say to receive state funding, local libraries must have policies to safeguard youth from “sexually explicit or other material deemed inappropriate for children or youth”.
“I think that the GOP chair on the state library board is forcing the removal of books just because of anti-library extremists. I think that’s ignoring the voices of Fairhope taxpayers and library users,” said Amber Frey of Read Freely Alabama, a nonprofit, grassroots free-speech advocacy organization that has fought restrictions on library content.
Read Freely Alabama says it has raised enough money for the library to cover the state funds that were cut off by the service board—almost $39,000 from about 550 donors by the morning of March 25.
“Kite Runner” author speaks out about his book being banned in Minnesota school
“Look, over the last 20 years, I have received stacks and stacks of letters from high school students who write to me in their own words about what reading “The Kite Runner” meant to them. I find such an enormous disconnect between the objections raised by the so-called concerned parents and the experience of the students who actually are reading the books.”
Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner,” spoke to MPR News about his book being banned by a school district in Minnesota. St. Francis Area Schools has been using the Florida-based website booklooks.org for book screening, rather than librarians or teachers. The ACLU says 46 books, including “The Kite Runner,” have been banned in the district since the policy was enacted in December.
“It’s essential that students are exposed to the free flow of ideas, to new and diverse voices that are both inside and outside of their communities, and it’s essential that students are encouraged to think critically about the challenges of sharing this often complicated and confusing world with fellow human beings who may not look or speak or think like they do,” Hosseini said.
“Banning books like ‘The Kite Runner’ doesn’t protect students at all. In fact, I’ve said this before. I think it betrays them. It robs our children and our students of something vital that we owe them as their parents and their instructors, which is the chance to broaden their human community, to foster empathy, to teach them to challenge their own preconceived ideas and to maybe take a step toward becoming a fuller and wiser version of their authentic selves.”
Federal judge kills Iowa’s LGBTQ+ school library book ban
A federal judge has blocked enforcement of a state law in Iowa that removes books that have LGBTQ+ themes with references to sexual acts from school libraries, reports Courthouse News Service.
In a 40-page decision, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher ruled that because Iowa’s regulations force the removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene, the law is facially unconstitutional.
Locher wrote that Iowa’s law — Senate File 496 enacted in 2023 — “makes no attempt to evaluate a book’s literary, political, artistic, or scientific value before requiring the book’s removal from a school library and thus comes nowhere close to applying the ‘obscenity’ standard that is typically used to determine the constitutionality of statewide book restrictions. The result is the forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene.”
Lochner wrote that the law has been unconstitutionally applied in dozens, if not hundreds, of situations in Iowa schools.
“Plaintiffs have established, at minimum, several dozen unconstitutional applications of Senate File 496 involving books that have undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value.” Locher wrote. This, he wrote, includes books like “As I Lay Dying,” “Ulysses,” “Brave New World,” “1984,” “Native Son,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Song of Solomon,” “Beloved,” “The Bluest Eye,” “The Kite Runner,” “Nineteen Minutes,” “Speak, Shout,” “Looking for Alaska,” “The Fault in Our Stars,” and “Last Night at the Telegraph Club.”
Take action
Alarmed by the escalating attempts to censor books? Here are five steps you can take now to protect the freedom to read.
- Follow news and social media in your community and state to keep apprised of organizations working to censor library or school materials.
- Show up for library workers at school or library board meetings and speak as a library advocate and community stakeholder who supports a parent’s right to restrict reading materials for their own child but not for all
- Help provide a safety net for library professionals as they defend intellectual freedom in their communities by giving to the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund.
- Educate friends, neighbors, and family members about censorship and how it harms communities. Share information from Banned Books Week.
- Join the Unite Against Book Bans movement and visit our Fight Censorship page to learn what you can do to defend the freedom to read in your community.
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