When you heard that you know it must be a good juicy book to read. So now we have books being banned by the conservatives.
But push back is starting, the candidates the “Moms for Liberty” sponsored lost, of the 166 candidates that were endorsed by MoL, only 54 were successful and now…
The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that these bans are also costing the taxpayers money!
This from a party that doesn’t want to fund the government and are willing to close down the government to push their lies and ideology!
Vote Blue to stop this invasion of Republicans into school and library boards!
Right now it is the right-wing conservatives who are deciding what you and your children can read!Heads up, folks - there are spoilers for century-old high-school literature which maybe you should read - not to shame you, but, like, all right. OK.
PARKER: Hey, everyone. You're listening to CODE SWITCH from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker. In high school, there were books that stuck with me, that shaped me - "Night" by Elie Wiesel, a teenage boy's account of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp; "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, about a Nigerian warrior defeated by European colonialism; "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, about an emo French guy too cool to feel or whatever. They all took place in different parts of the world and told completely different stories, but I think each of them helped turn on an empathy valve inside of me. These books helped me navigate the world, but it wasn't just the stories, which I found fascinating - it was also the way they were taught. And that got me thinking about the person who assigned all of those books to me - my high school English teacher.
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SCHELINE: So if it's a mere mention of homosexuality, does that mean I cannot have characters that are LGBTQ or alluding to the fact that they're LGBTQ? And, harmful to minors - what does - I mean, we, as a library, would not ever choose to have material that was harmful to minors. A lot of people, when we first announced that it was adults-only, assumed that we were getting rid of all of our children's literature - like, that we were dumping the kids' books. And it was hard to explain to people that eliminating a book from a library is censorship. So is this new, harmful to minors? Are we redefining it? The state legislature is like, no. No, we're not redefining it. But then others are - yes. Yes, we're redefining it. There's no clear answer in the legislation.
PARKER: It's about who can decide. Should it be the legislature, the librarian or the parent? There's no clear answer.
But push back is starting, the candidates the “Moms for Liberty” sponsored lost, of the 166 candidates that were endorsed by MoL, only 54 were successful and now…
I’m surprised that they also didn’t sue for slander and libel for saying that the books were “depicts or describes sexual content” or is “pornographic.”The country’s largest publishers sue Florida over school book bans
Works by hundreds of authors, from Maya Angelou to Judy Blume, have been challenged and removed from school libraries. Now a group is suing to bring them back.
The Washington Post
By Maham Javaid
August 31, 2024A group of major publishers, authors and parents have sued Florida education officials over a law that allows parents and local residents to limit what books are available in school libraries if they depict or describe “sexual conduct.”
The lawsuit filed by Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins and others alleges that the state law, enacted last year, brought about hundreds of book removals and is violating First Amendment rights to free speech.
According to the lawsuit, some of the books that Florida has required be removed from school libraries under House Bill 1069 include: Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter-House Five.”
The lawsuit challenges a section of the bill that requires school districts to remove a book that “depicts or describes sexual content” or is “pornographic.” One process to remove books from school libraries under the law allows parents to read out loud the controversial passages during a school board meeting, and if the board halts the reading due to explicit content, the school must “discontinue use of the material.”
Florida officials have described this week’s lawsuit as a “stunt.”
The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that these bans are also costing the taxpayers money!
Book bans cost Utah taxpayers thousands of dollars. Here’s how much two school districts spent.
Two Utah school districts removed all 13 titles now banned in public schools statewide — and collectively spent more than $29,000 to do so.
By Carmen Nesbitt
September 14, 2024Banning books in Utah’s public schools comes with a hefty price tag, including the costs of purchasing copies for committees to review.
In the Davis School District alone, that cost topped $27,000 during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.
Over those two years, the district reviewed around 100 titles. While not all were removed, they did ban the 13 books that are now prohibited in every public school across Utah.
That’s because, under a new law, local decisions can now lead to a book being banned from public schools statewide if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine a book amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code.
[…]
The district spent nearly $980 to purchase copies for 11 of the 13 books banned from public schools statewide. The records provided to The Tribune did not include costs for “Forever” by Judy Blume and “A Court of Silver Flames” by Sarah J. Maas.
This from a party that doesn’t want to fund the government and are willing to close down the government to push their lies and ideology!
Vote Blue to stop this invasion of Republicans into school and library boards!
It's crazy! My grandson is reading A Color Purple now for his 11th grade Lit. class. I remember having to get my parent's permission for the books in my senior psychological literature class. I remember reading Catcher in the Rye. I also read a book recommended by Advanced World History class. Last of the Wine. It would probably be on a banned book list now. My parents were both readers and encouraged reading. I was learning about the Greek and Roman in class. I had the same teacher for psychology and sociology. He wrote a recommendation to UCI for me. Later I learned he was gay. But to me he was just a great teacher!
ReplyDeleteThis is going on in my community as well. The people pushing it are totally crazy - and they don't have children! I have been reading adult books for as long as I can remember. My parents never cared what I read and I read everything I could get my hands on.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I have been buying and donating books for our elementary school's library; in excess of over 8,000 over the last 20+ years. I intentionally seek out age appropriate books that may be or are banned in Florida and elsewhere. If there is a question of suitability the librarian has the final say. That's usually in conjunction with the approval of the parent if the book may be too mature for the child. The librarian actually pulled books that have been banned elsewhere and put them in a display and taught a class about those books were banned elsewhere. Mind you, these are K-5th grade kids and they were incensed an adult would not want them to read those volumes. If you do not want your kid to read Harry Potter do not stop other kids from reading it.
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