What 100-Year-Old Grace Linn Can Teach Us About Standing Up for the Freedom to Read: Book Censorship News, March 31, 2023

Grace Linn is a 100-year-old widow of a WWII veteran, a grandmother, and a craftivist. On Tuesday, she spoke at a Martin County, Florida faculty board assembly to protest the removal of 80+ books from the school library. Her assertion has gotten quite a lot of media protection, and she or he was later interviewed on MSNBC, Fox 35, and extra. That’s for good motive, as a result of in a speech that lasted only some minutes, she’s successfully demonstrated what’s wanted to battle again in opposition to censorship.

Kelly Jensen is taking a much-needed break this week, so I’m filling in for the Censorship News Roundup. One of the questions Kelly and different anti-censorship activists and teams obtain essentially the most typically is, “What can we do? How can I help?” The Censorship Round Up archive is crammed with so some ways to assist, from voting to calling your consultant to talking up at school board and library board conferences and extra. We even have an anticensorship tool lit. We even compiled and up to date assets into an e book: How to Fight Book Bans and Censorship. The assets are there. But it’s as much as you to behave, and Grace Linn reveals precisely how to do this. Here are a few of the classes she supplies, from best to the more difficult!

We haven’t all lived 100 years to attract on, however there’s a motive you’re obsessed with this matter. Some folks speak about how books have been life-saving in their very own life. Others speak about family members who’re affected by e book bans.

Book banning teams faucet into folks’s concern and anger to go viral. Evoking emotion is a strong software, however there are such a lot of higher methods to do this. A private story in regards to the pleasure and acceptance you present in studying a e book that represented you can also be emotional, however in a extra constructive warfare.

I hope that this evokes you to comply with in Grace Linn’s footsteps!

If you’re a literary agent, don’t neglect to fill out Kelly’s survey about whether or not you’ve seen e book banning impact e book acquisitions. And if you happen to aren’t a literary agent, please enhance it on social media to get it to the fitting folks!

Book Censorship News: March 31, 2023

• Missouri lawmakers have voted to defund their libraries, slicing all $4.5 million in state funding. Republican Representative Cody Smith mentioned the funding lower was due to the lawsuit American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri filed preventing e book banning laws. Smith mentioned, “I don’t think we should subsidize that effort, so we’re going to take out the funding.” A representative of the ACLU said, “If the members of the committee are concerned about preserving taxpayer funds, they should stop enacting laws they know do not meet constitutional muster, not burden local governments in a misguided effort to silence organizations who object to the legislature’s overreach.”
• Indy Reads, a literary nonprofit in Indianapolis, received a bomb threat for internet hosting a drag story hour.
• A Heyworth Junior High School (IL) teacher was fired — sorry, “involuntarily resigned” — as a result of she had a duplicate of This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson in her classroom. This was not a part of the curriculum. It was simply one of many books within the classroom library.
• Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins wants to replace public libraries with church-owned libraries. He tweeted, “The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”
• 100 Indiana elementary students held a walk-out to protest Indiana’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Third grader Scarlet Chavez mentioned, “We are trying to protest to make sure that kids have rights and won’t be stopped from expressing their whole self.” (Those pictures are concurrently cute and heartbreaking.)

• Jodi Picoult has been talking about her books being banned, together with on ABC News. She mentions that the technique getting used is to problem enormous quantities of books at a time, which signifies that the books will instantly be pulled and be held up in a really gradual evaluate course of. That means, even when a e book is finally accepted, it can have been stored off cabinets for months — and could be challenged once more, beginning the cycle over.
• Central York High School (PA) has eliminated Push by Sapphire for evaluate. A pupil spoke out on the faculty board assembly, saying how essential it’s for her to see books with predominant characters that appear to be her, and mentioned, “Why can’t we have our own mind — our own voice?” Dozens of students showed up to the meeting wearing red to protest the ban. Bizarrely, Superintendent Peter Aiken mentioned through the assembly, “There’s no playbook for this.” Every faculty library ought to have a playbook for this — a set of pointers on the way to deal with e book challenges. After Central York has been within the information numerous instances for e book bans in the previous couple of years, it’s ridiculous to not have a coverage hammered out.
• Galesburg-Augusta High School (MI) librarian Jerod Kauffman has spoken out about book challenge policies not being followed by the principal and district superintendent. Challenged books are supposed to remain on the cabinets till the evaluate is accomplished, in keeping with coverage. Superintendent Wendy Maynard-Somers mentioned the e book wasn’t faraway from cabinets; they simply checked it out to evaluate it…which accomplishes precisely the identical factor.
• “The Spring Branch ISD [TX] School Board voted to allow the Board of Trustees to decide if books should be banned, without input from teachers and librarians.” The superintendent has mentioned it’s momentary, as a result of they’ve obtained such an enormous quantity of e book challenges: “I’m not going to call my entire academic staff off to sit and listen to book challenges every day, all day while our kids don’t get what they need. So I’m asking for the board to assist me.” It claims that the district spent $30,000 and 226 staff hours on a single book challenge. Book opinions ought to take time and be carried out by professionals. This solely rewards e book banners for difficult an extended checklist of titles at a time.
• A proposed Iowa bill would have any book that has been banned from one school removed from every school in the state.
• The Iowa Association of School Boards has mentioned that if the Iowa invoice passes, staff would have to read thousands of books at each school to make sure that no highschool library books embody “depictions of sex acts.”
• Tam Kelley tried to get You Know, Sex banned from Conway Public Library (AR), however as a substitute she’s been banned, for taking the e book from the kids’s part with out checking it out. (You know, stealing.)

• Fear-mongering about Gender Queer has spread to Australia.
• The Virgin Suicides has been pulled from the curriculum of an optional English class as North Smithfield High School (RI).
• The Disney movie Ruby Bridges has been pulled from North Shore Elementary school (FL) till it’s reviewed, after a mum or dad claimed it “might result in students learning white people hate Black people.”
• Hilton Central School District (NY) received ANOTHER bomb threat over LGBTQ+ books. Specifically, the bomb risk talked about This Book Is Gay. That’s twice in a single week the colleges have been on lock out for bomb threats.
• This Book Is Gay has been banned at Hillsborough County (FL) middle schools.
• Alice Oseman spoke out after Heartstopper was faraway from Clay County District Schools (FL).
• St. Tammany Library Control Board (LA) voted to keep all five books challenged, together with I am Jazz and The Bluest Eye. When MJ Castillo spoke out about her experiences being bullied as an LGBTQ+ younger particular person, somebody with the e book banning group the “Accountability Project” heckled her in regards to the Nashville faculty shooter being transgender.
• After “Rainbowland” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton was banned from a Wisconsin elementary faculty, Miley Cyrus donated to Pride and Less Prejudice, which supplies “free LGBTQ age-appropriate books to classrooms from preschool to third grade.”
• Missouri library workers are getting threatened with jail time for doing their jobs, and police are already exhibiting as much as examine claims of them distributing pornography to minors. This article additionally reveals how this concern has led to librarians self-censoring.
• Florida House Bill 1069, aka the “period ban” invoice, would stop dialogue of menstruation, together with between youngsters, for college students youthful than sixth grade. Here’s what five Florida teens think about the bill.
• A McKinney ISD school board member spoke in front of the Texas House Committee on Public Education in assist of extra restrictions across the books allowed at school libraries. He known as The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison “a very disgusting book” and claims youngsters are going to highschool in furry costumes.
• In response to Republicans advocating for e book bans as a substitute of gun regulation, Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz mentioned, “Dead kids can’t read.”