Posted on March 23, 2023 at 4:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The American Library Association released a report today with alarming yet unsurprising news: Book ban attempts are up drastically.
Specifically, efforts to remove books and resources in libraries and schools nearly doubled in 2022 over the previous year, according to a New York Times article on the report.
The 1,269 attempts mark a record since the ALA began watching these trends, over twenty years ago.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said the ALA used to see parents raising concerns about their children's access to isolated titles.
Not anymore.
Now, she told the NYT, "we’re seeing a campaign by politically partisan groups to remove vast swaths of books that don’t meet their agenda, whether that’s a political or religious or moral agenda."
And more recent news on bans comes from The Marshall Project, which has been working on a searchable database of what's forbidden in various prisons.
The newest post shares some big-picture takeaways about books banned from prisons.
One such observation indirectly inspired the post: the fact that five states and the federal government explicitly prohibit having a shareable list of banned books.
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Categories: Today in Books