Let's Read Banned Books Together!
Hello, bookish friends! I know I haven't posted for a while, and I apologize. I hope to be more consistent with posting great content about books in the future!
Anyway, I am very excited to start a weekly Banned Books series on this blog. I recently wrote a Facebook post that helped me with this decision:
We have a banned books bookcase in our house! This is something that my stepson feels very passionately about, and has asked me several times to put one together. He even made a sign for it.
Here's what started our discussion about banned books. A few months ago, we were driving home from school and caught this episode of 'This American Life:' https://www.thisamericanlife.org/758/talking-while-black
In it, middle grade author Jerry Craft talks about how his graphic novels, "The New Kid" and "Class Act" are being accused of teaching kids critical race theory and anti-racism. His books are banned and challenged in many school and public libraries for these "reasons." But both my stepson and I have read these books. They're great, and they are not controversial. "The New Kid" is about a Black kid who starts at a new school. He likes drawing, makes new friends, and balances his new social life with his old friends. It's also largely based on Craft's life.
"You know, there are other kid lit books that are being banned in America right now," I told him after we discussed how ridiculous the bans on Craft's books are.
"Do you think we have any other books at home that are banned?" he asked.
"100%."
I started sorting books today and honestly, it's heart-breaking. There was a record number of 1,597 books being banned or challenged in 2021. I took most of my info from here: https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/ and started going through our own home library.
"Front Desk," an amazing and devastating middle grade novel, has been banned.
"The Diary of Anne Frank" has been banned.
The picture book, "All Are Welcome" has been banned.
Jason Reynold's beautiful and gorgeous middle grade "Track" series has been banned.
And then I saw that all of the Mindy Kim early reader novels have been banned, and I had a mini tantrum. These are the books that Isobel adores. They are adorable and cute, and they're perfect for seven year-olds. And they're not controversial.
I have read all the books on our banned bookcase, and none of them deserve to be banned. Some of them were on the reading list for Ethan's Battle of the Books in elementary school. None of them are radicalizing kids. What they are doing is representing diverse stories, which kids desperately need.
To make things worse. I saw this NPR article this morning:
I want to focus on kidlit, although occasionally I might feature an adult book as well. With the numbers of banned books increasing every week, I'm sure I won't run out of material to cover! 😠
And now I want to hear from you. Have you heard about all the children's literature being banned in America? What are your thoughts? What's your favorite banned book?
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