Banned Books discussion

https://www.everylibrary.org/elbb24

Coo! Thanks for sharing!

Keynote speech Day One:
Emily J.M. Knox is updating her book Book Banning in 21st-Century America (Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series) Hardcover January 16, 2015.

This whole mess began LONG before COVID and the parental rights people but it's changed since 2015.

In 2013 it was an occasional challenge by small groups or one or two people. 10 years later it escalated to larger, more organized groups of people complaining about public tax payer dollars and public spaces, community standards but are speaking only about themselves and their circles. Libraries are for EVERYBODY.

The censors want libraries to be neat and orderly when they're actually chaotic. You have Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott on the same shelf as Margaret Atwood and other contemporary writers of VERY different books.

(However, in the children's library you do not have such varied types of books).

The Dewey Decimal System is inherently problematic in that it's old and outdated and the Library of Congress is slow to update (I heard the same thing from my archivist colleagues in community archives).

The would-be censors fear books are mirrors and if a child reads GenderQueer, they will turn out to be LGBTQ+ which in their minds is sinful and wrong. Therefore, those who advocate for these types of books in the library MUST be there to harm children. Removing books about certain types of people will protect the innocence of children.

Dr. Knox argues kids have their own internal world, their own thoughts, feelings and ideas. Books can help kids learn to make sense of things happening to them or someone they know. "Windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors" argument.

There's no easy solution to this problem.

I think they were preaching to the choir and the would-be censors need to take a deep breath and listen to these discussions but I know they won't.

I wasn't able to watch, but I think they're all going to be on youtube, so I will try to catch them later. I have a very busy week this week.

I suspect that most of the speakers will be speaking to the choir and the people who need to hear any of these conversations won't.

Jennifer W wrote: "I suspect that most of the speakers will be speaking to the choir and the people who need to hear any of these conversations won't.."

Yes I assume so but they do provide food for thought and even non book banners may learn to challenge their biases and discover something new. I'm reading That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America and she talks about how she went to an ALA meeting and learned a lot and went home and took a closer look at her library collection, did a lot of reading and totally revised her collection policy to include more modern, diverse perspectives. She had her own unconscious biases even though she's a tolerant, caring person.

Did you get to watch more speakers this week? I didn't, but I bookmarked the youtube page, so I will catch them later.

I watched everyone through Julia Quinn. Various authors discuss their books, love of reading, libraries and librarians. They're not celebrating banned books and are aware some people won't change their minds no matter what you say.

One good question is what their book would have meant to the author when they were children.

The majority of book challenges come from a small minority of people. People who haven't read the books, aren't readers and don't have library cards.

The Proudest Color was based on something that happened to the author in Kindergarten when another child compared their skin tone to Sheila's and decided Sheila was "too dark" to be their friend. That's insane because from the Zoom video call onto my old laptop screen, she looked pretty light to me. The authors are Middle Eastern and wanted kids to feel proud of their brown skin. My own opinion is the book is probably banned for mention all kinds of famous people with brown skin like... Kamala Harris and we can't have THAT in the library where their precious darlings might see it right? (Not without including Trump MAGA propaganda too).

Maia Kobabe found reliving childhood pretty traumatic but was happy to have eir sibling to go over things with. E was very dyslexic and didn't learn to read until e was 11 and then became a big library user.

Abi Maxwell wrote a memoir about her family and is fighting to protect her child. The family had to move away from the place where her ancestors lived for 300 years to escape anti-trans laws. Uprooting was traumatic and unsettling being away from family. It was different writing a memoir than writing fiction but she felt it was important to tell her family's story.

Kyle Lukoff didn't become a brother until he was an adult. If he could go back in time and show When Aidan Became A Brother to his younger self, his younger self had a different name so probably wouldn't understand or think some relative or someone with the same name wrote the book. His younger self would have liked knowing it was Ok to be yourself like Aiden.

Kids never ever ask what transgender means. They know! The only questions 3-4 year olds ask are about babies! Why do they cry all the time? and stuff like that LOL!

Jason Reynolds basically said the same thing. Kids ask about what they want to know about. In my personal experience, kids except adults to be omniscient and have answers to all their burning questions. They ask when they want to understand something. Adults assume they know everything about him and fuss about what it is they think he's teaching their children. (Critical Race Theory?) Whereas kids don't assume anything and just ask "Mr. Reynolds, can you help me understand?"

He didn't grow up with books that reflected his experiences. Monster was the first but wasn't written until he was an adult. As a young man growing up in the 80s, he loved reading rap lyrics. He liked the rhythm and when his grandma died, he did the only thing he knew how to do to make his mom feel better, he wrote a poem. Mom was so proud she printed it on the back of the funeral program. The family loved it and felt comforted for a time and he realized "a ha! I am a writer."

Stephen Chbosky is not a trained writer. When he announced, as a teen, he wanted to be a writer, his dad told him "You know, great readers make great writers." So Stephen was upset because he wasn't a great writer but he loves movies and watches a lot of movies and SOMEONE has to write those movies. He approaches writing in a cinematic sort of way.

Laurie Halse Anderson,a longtime champion of the freedom to read is also not a trained writer although she has a degree in linguistics.

That's all I remember off the top of my head. I was working for many of the presentations and listening while I worked.

Thank you for that information. It helps to put the book in context, although in some ways, it makes me even more horrified.

Are you a librarian?