By TERRA MORRISON, age 12
As far back as ancient times, censorship has been a tool to remove and restrict information from the public. The first recorded book ban in what we now call America occurred in 1637, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned New English Canaan by Thomas Morton because it gave a harsh criticism of Puritans in New England.
Now all over the country, schools and public libraries are facing calls to ban and remove books that some consider to be putting bad ideas into children’s heads. This includes books containing LGBTQ+ characters or ones that seem even slightly inappropriate — for example, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. In these cases, people argue that kids are too young to be exposed to these types of ideas, and that reading about them will be a bad influence or even unhealthy.
According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, there were 4,240 unique book challenges in 2023, which was up 65% from 2022. The books that got challenged most often in 2023 were by or about LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people. The American Library Association (ALA) has estimated that books representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices made up almost half of all censorship attempts in 2023. According to the Unite Against Book Bans campaign, “Many of the people seeking to censor library materials mischaracterize books with cherry-picked excerpts intended to provoke outrage and create a false impression of what they’re about.”
According to the ALA, parents and pressure groups accounted for almost half of the challenges against books in 2023. Book challenges try to give reasons to remove books from public view.
The ALA says these challenges and bannings can be very harmful to children who need a lot of this information to learn and to gain an inclusive perspective on society.
However, people are fighting against book bans. Banned Books Week is a national event that celebrates literature and helps unite people against book challenges and bans. It began in 1982 to help alert people to the injustices and suppression of book bannings. The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is “Freed Between the Lines,” and it is set for Sept. 22-28.
In addition to Banned Books Week, there are also many resources that help give people access to literature and fight against book bans. The Book Résumés project lists hundreds of volumes and gives information on them. These résumés give reasons and evidence for why a book is important to read so people can defend that book if it’s being challenged.
Another resource is the Books Unbanned project, which gives kids aged 13 to 26 access to audiobooks of banned books through their local library. These may be books that people do not have access to due to censorship, or simply because they do not have access to a library or are unable to get to one. The Books Unbanned card provides a resource to a wide variety of people. For example, one 21-year-old Books Unbanned cardholder from Utah shared: “I’m Latinx and queer, and it’s really important to me to have accessible content that speaks to me. I believe in freedom, and there is no freedom in censorship.”
Book banning can remove important resources from view, especially from children who could greatly benefit from them. Although many book challenges are presented every year, there is still a huge amount of work being put in to fight back. There are many groups and individuals putting a ton of effort into preserving books in libraries and reintroducing ones that have been removed. With much labor, people are trying to reverse the harm that censorship has caused and protect access to books in America.
