12+ Book Censorship Posts To Revisit: Book Censorship News, April 4, 2025

Having written this column since mid-2021, I sometimes forget what I’ve covered. In some ways, I haven’t written anything new in the world of book censorship because the tactics, goals, and outcomes have not changed much at all over the course of this significant era of censorship. The guide to 56 tasks you can take to end book censorship? It’s literally the same guide as every other “how to fight book bans” guide since 2021, but it’s repackaged as a more granular checklist to make attending to those tasks easier. You’re still ultimately showing up to board meetings, voting, and sharing verified information about the latest news in book censorship.

This week, rather than drafting something fresh, let’s take the time to look back at some of the Literary Activism columns you may have missed from the previous several Marches and Aprils Catch up on what you may have missed, and remember that there is nothing new in the book—it’s just different names and faces trying to get their 15 minutes of manufactured outrage fame. We are seeing the results of these actions play out and if you’ve been watching or engaged, nothing is surprising. That doesn’t mean it isn’t infuriating, disgusting, or not in need to pushback. It just means that the groundwork’s been being laid so it is simply not new in the least.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month & Book Banning (April 2024)

One thing that the far right gets correct in their complaints about bathroom and locker room use arguments is that the instances of sexual assault are indeed higher when transgender people use the bathroom they feel most appropriately aligns with their gender. The thing the far right gets wrong, though — and we know it’s purposeful mis- and dis- information here — is that it’s not the cisgender bathroom and locker room users who are being attacked. It’s the trans individuals, A quarter of those between ages 13 and 18 were assaulted when simply trying to do their business.

You’re Wrong About These Common Myths About Book Bans (March 2024)

Book bans make kids/teens hurry to read the books being banned

Book bans are driving kids away from libraries. Moreover, the severe restrictions placed on libraries and what they can acquire means that wish lists from students are not being fulfilled like they once were, either.

Recall that for many kids, the school library is the only place of book access available to them. No matter how many times book banners say they’re “only removing books from schools,” they’re doing the same things at public libraries. With book prices for YA titles reaching upwards of $25 a pop for hardcover and $16 for paperback, teens simply cannot afford to buy the books if they even have access to a local bookstore. No, most of them do not have credit cards to “just get them from Amazon,” either.

Indeed, as EdWeek reported, “Each new book challenged in a district reduced the probability that the district would buy a new book about LGBTQ characters by 4 percent.”

How The BookmarkED/OnShelf App, Created to Help Schools Ban Books, Fuels Them Instead (March 2024)

In December 2023, BookmarkED—an app designed to “help” educators, librarians, and parents navigate book bans in school libraries—rebranded. Now OnShelf, the app has been making its way into schools in Texas. Freedom of Information Requests obtained new information about how the app is getting into districts in Texas and how the app alerts users to so-called “banned books” in the district. The app is a student data privacy nightmare, and it undermines the professional capabilities of trained teacher librarians in educational institutions.

How Public Libraries Are Targeted Right Now—It’s Not “Just” Books (March 2024)

Book bans in public libraries continue to increase. Per numbers released by the American Library Association (ALA) this month, there was a 92% increase in requests to ban books in public libraries over the last year. These numbers are nowhere near accurate in terms of quantity and scope, as they only showcase reports acquired or received by the ALA, but they offer a solid perspective of what we know to be true. Public libraries are not immune to the book banning which has taken hold since 2021. Book banning is not limited to school libraries.

But something that needs to be addressed more plainly is that censorship in public libraries does and will continue to look different than in school libraries. Yes, people will and do complain about individual titles or lists of titles. The destruction of public institutions remains at the core of the agenda, but when it comes to public libraries, things look different because they are different institutions than public schools. Here are several ways we’re seeing public libraries being targeted.

They’re Dismantling Higher Education, Too (March 2024)

But as much as the rhetoric has been about “protecting the kids,” it is very much not about the kids at all. If it were, then DEI departments or programs at public universities — where students are near-universally no longer minors — would not need to be disbanded. Texas outlawed DEI programs at all public universities, as did several other states. In Florida, the dismantling of higher education has an incubator program at New College. Last year, the state’s governor implemented new leadership at the public liberal arts school, which included installing completely unqualified political agitators to the institution’s advisory board. Students and faculty reported on the chaos happening in the school to begin the 2023-24 academic year, and even more recently, the institution saw sanctions leveraged against it by the American Association of University Professors for standards violations. Only 12 other institutions have ever been given these sanctions over the last 30 years.

Book Banning County Commissioners Censor Honor for Girl Scout’s Banned Book Library (April 2024)

The Hanover County Supervisors has censored the honor they are giving to one of their young community members. Why? Because that student’s Girl Scout project is related to banned books — something that the local school board is actively engaged with and something that Commissioners themselves are currently engaged with at the public library.

The Next Generation United Daughters of the Confederacy (April 2023)

In 1894, a group of women banded together to honor their history and legacy. These women, all white, established themselves as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in Nashville and set to work venerating the history of the Confederacy. UDC established both a national chapter and chapters throughout member states in the south, their messaging coming from the top and disseminating down to the ground.

The UDC saw their primary mission as supporting and encouraging the erection of confederate monuments across the south. In doing so, they hoped to “tell of the glorious fight against the greatest odds a nation ever faced, that their hallowed memory should never die.” UDC members created an offshoot of their organization called the Children of the Confederacy, wherein young people were taught a version of the Civil War and Southern Heritage that never existed but, indeed, was a mythos of White Supremacy.

Noting “Changed Complexion of Staff,” Elmwood Park Public Library Board Takes Over: A Case Study in Library De-Professionalization (March 2023)

The December 2022 minutes** of the Elmwood Public Library Board meeting (IL) are unlike any public library meeting minutes you’ve likely seen. Though public comment was not long, the minutes indicate extreme discontent happening within the walls of the library.

And, perhaps, the library’s advertising over 1/5 of their positions as open–all of which are full-time, professional and managerial positions–also sheds light on what appears to be a Board eager to deprofessionalize the facility while implementing an anti-DEI, anti-inclusive culture in order to “align” with the needs of the community.

How Much Does a Book Challenge Cost? (March 2022)

One of the many reasons book challenges have grown in the last year is that it creates tremendous paperwork and time investment on the behalf of a school district. This, in turn, allows those who challenge to point to inadequacies in how schools are being run because they’ve invested so much time and money into having a book in the facility they believe should not have been there to begin with. It creates a compelling argument for how tax money is misspent, furthering the belief many of these censors have that they should have the right to receive vouchers (on taxpayer money) to send their children to whatever school they wish.

But have we looked at this from the opposite side yet? Just how much money do these challenges steal from schools, which are already underfunded?

Editor’s note: there’s an updated post from late 2024 looking at the financial strain of book bans on schools and libraries that makes this 2022 cost analysis look downright quaint.

Hero Syndrome in Book Banning Efforts (March 2022)

Parents have always had rights. School board meetings have always been open to the public. But because of how the pandemic forced parents to pay more attention where before they never had to, many found the connections with other like-minded adults gave them a way to rally together behind a cause. They’ve turned to local school boards to stand up for what they believe are just causes.

But these school board meetings have turned into something else, too: an opportunity to be a hero. The louder, the more outrageous, the more backed-by-others-in-blue-shirts/red-shirts/people-with-signs, the more attention those citizens receive. The more their names show up in right-wing social media. The more they’re made templates for how to demand rights and ensure “liberty” and “freedom” in eduction.

In Leander, Texas, a woman brandished a pink dildo — one she “borrowed” — to make a point about the content of books made available as optional reading to high schoolers. Everyone remembers the woman with the pink dildo. That someone could quickly search “book ban” and “pink dildo” and get her name gives her hero status.

What Do School Boards Do? (April 2022)

Good boards, in addition to working collaboratively among one another and with the school administration, also hear from the community in which they serve. Let it be emphasized that means the entire community — not just those who are able to show up to a board meeting or coordinate a rally at said board meeting to be loud. Good board members also know they represent a team and not themselves on that board, meaning that board members who go rogue and post board or school business outside official meetings are not only creating a disturbance, but they’re acting unethically.

School boards are not responsible for determining what each educator teaches in their individual classrooms. Many do have oversight on textbooks, but more often than not that’s due to the budget requirements of a significant textbook purchase (and it gives parents their opportunity to review the texts, offer their feedback, and see where their tax money is going — rights they’ve always had). As the Illinois Association of School Boards notes, the difference between a school board and administration is that a school board governs while administration manages. Governing means offering strategic direction; managing means using that direction to create and implement action.

You Don’t Solve Book Bans by Banning More Books (April 2022)

Demanding books be banned to combat book bans isn’t clever or funny. It’s not subversive. It’s harmful. It actively works against the cause of anti-censorship and First Amendment rights and sets forward momentum gained in the work another step backward. More, it gains the kind of media attention that the hard work doesn’t see and thus, cannot be enhanced or supported by. Pointing out hypocrisy has been done over and over — and it doesn’t work.

Fighting book bans with more book bans does not work and it should not work. Fighting book bans requires time, energy, and money, and it requires showing up to school boards, to library boards, and in your own community. It requires giving money to organizations that are on the ground doing the work, mobilizing people to speak up and defend the rights of all people to access materials they wish to. It is not about engaging hate with more hate. This mobilizes nobody and creates significant distraction.

Book Censorship News, April 4, 2025

Note: I’ll be out on caretaking leave for a few weeks, and my colleagues will be covering this column. It will likely look different until late April, but you will be in good hands.

• A bill in New Hampshire that would make it easier to ban books in the state is one step closer to passing.
• “With its state funding at risk, Fairhope city and library officials are contemplating a review of approximately 35 books deemed by state library officials to be “sexually explicit” and inappropriate for teen readers.” This is a new chapter in the Fairhope Public Library (AL) saga (see here). The next meeting, where they’ll decide whether or not to review the books being targeted by local bigotry groups who have been nonstop in targeting the library and these same books over and over again. The article is about how the state library funding services are citing those books as why funding is being withheld, but those books come from complaints from the local Moms for Liberty and Clean Up Alabama groups, NOT the community at large.
• This story is paywalled, but it’s about how Maryland Representative Andy Harris doesn’t like that a public library held a Trans Day of Visibility event.
• A Charleston County school board member (SC) is mad about the inclusion of It’s Perfectly Normal on public library shelves and is demanding its removal to a restricted area. This is an effing puberty book, y’all.
• The US Secretary of Defense is demanding the removal of some books from the Naval Academy’s library. But I thought book bans were a hoax? Anyway, 400 books have been purged.
• The Llano County (TX) public librarian fired for not removing books from shelves at the demands of some local bigots settled her lawsuit last month. We now know she received $225,000 in the settlement over her wrongful firing. That’s just the first chunk of change Llano County taxpayers will be on the hook for over their library board’s censorious ways.
• Airdrie Public Library (Alberta, Canada) will not be banning Let’s Talk About It from their shelves.
• Redlands Unified School Board of Education (CA) is really digging its heels in about developing book ban policies in light of the need to cater to “parents rights” criers. Remember that California is a “good” “blue” state with more than one anti-book ban law.
• Colorado’s freedom to read (aka: anti-book ban) bill has passed through committee.
• Oregon’s Senate has passed their freedom to read/anti-book ban bill and now it’s off to the House of Representatives.
• Duval County Schools (FL) considered overturning the ban on Ellen Hopkins’s book Identical this week, which was instituted in 2023. The board decided to permanently ban it.
• A new bill in North Carolina would ban books deemed “harmful for minors” and criminalize librarians for making such books available. We know what “harmful for minors” is code for here, and we know these librarian criminalization bills are nothing but copycat nonsense among genital-obsessed politicians.
• “House lawmakers passed what’s effectively a statewide ban on sexual content in K-12 schools on Thursday, which would also create a complaint and appeals process for parents to challenge books they feel are inappropriate.” New Hampshire republicans want to ban any content they don’t like from being taught in schools and create easy means to ban books.
• Elizabeth School District (CO), despite being told they need to return 19 banned books to shelves, have yet to do so.
• A group called “Parents and Taxpayers Against Pornography in Rockford Public Schools” is having their lawsuit to have 14 books removed from Rockford Public Schools (MI) heard this week. The lawsuit was tossed out in 2023, but they’ve appealed the decision.
• Lawmakers in Arkansas are one step closer to abolishing their state library.
• A must-read deep dive from ProPublica about Cy-Fair Independent School District (TX), where a board has removed chapters from textbooks over the last few years thanks to swallowing the propaganda about “CRT” and more.
• The latest update in the lawsuit filed by Moms For Liberty against Clyde-Savannah School District (NY) over their demands for banning books.
• Falls Church Library (VA) will not be removing a Palestinian themed children’s book from the collection, though they are relocating it from the children’s to the adult section. An important line here: “most emails on boths sides appeared to be part of coordinated efforts at the national level and were not from Falls Church residents.”
• This story is paywalled for me, but it’s about how Beaufort County Schools (SC) have now seen LGBTQ+ stickers removed from schools. This school system was the one where there were over 90 book challenges from the local Moms hate group, and while most books were kept, there were a handful the district decided to ban.

This week we covered the gutting of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the postponement of a vote on banning 10 books in South Carolina, and the utterly destructive and cruel Ohio House budget proposal that would slash library funding and demand relocation of trans and gender themed materials from anywhere minors may use local libraries.