Children’s books being banned in the US

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American Association believes that attempts to ban books are initiatives to silence writers who had immense courage. Boy and girl in library GETTY IMAGES/via BBC British author Philip Pullman’s acclaimed fantasy novel The Golden Compass was named one of the top 100 children’s books of all time by BBC Culture. The book ranks sixth, making Pullman the highest-ranking living author on the list. The novel is the first volume of the Frontiers of the Universe trilogy. But when it was first published in the United States in 1996, the book was banned in some parts of the country. And, in 2008, it was the second most questioned book in the United States. In the UK, The Golden Compass won the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Fiction in 1995, and in 2019, Pullman received a knighthood and that year’s JM Barrie Award, for “the achievement of a lifetime in delighting children”. But the worldview presented by The Golden Compass and the other books in the trilogy, considered by some to be atheistic in tone, ended up disturbing some noisy minorities in the United States. In 2008, the American Library Association (ALA) published a list of banned books, ranking The Golden Compass as the second most questioned book in the country, over objections filed by the Catholic League. And indeed, the trilogy caused outrage in some quarters in the United States. In the United Kingdom, columnist Peter Hitchens claimed that Pullman was “the anti-[C. S.] Lewis, the one for whom atheists would have prayed, if atheists had prayed”. 100 best children’s books of all time, compiled by the BBC. The banning of The Golden Compass can be considered a precursor to the censorship of books for “moral”, religious or worldview reasons. But now, the questioning and banning of books in the United States reached unprecedented levels. The ALA recorded an unprecedented number of book disputes in 2022, including more than 2,500 individual titles. This is the highest number of attempted book bans since the ALA began for more than 20 years. Several books for young people have been questioned on issues such as race, gender and sexuality. They include Gênero Queer: Memórias, by Maia Kobabe (Ed. Tinta da China, 2023); Nem All Boys Are Blue, by George M. Johnson (ed. Mills, 2022); The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (Ed. Cia. das Letras, 2019); and Lawn Boy (“Gardener boy”, in free translation), by Jonathan Evison (no edition in Portuguese). “Ultimately, attempts to ban books are initiatives to silence writers who had the immense courage to tell their stories,” according to ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada. “The books that people question most are written by, or about, LGBTQ+ individuals or people of color. These books are on library shelves because someone in the community wants to read them. The librarian’s job is to provide access to these writers and their stories, either because they reflect the reader’s experience or because they help clarify an unknown point of view”, says Pelayo-Lozada. She continues: “Americans like freedom of expression and being involved in the expression of others. We choose the books and ideas we want to be involved with, but we don’t get to decide what our neighbors can read and think. We don’t we can silence stories we don’t like.” The book ban movement is driven by a vocal minority that demands censorship, according to Kasey Meehan, director of the Freedom to Read project at PEN America. “This school year has seen the effects of new state laws to censor ideas and materials in public schools, in an extension of the book ban movement started in 2021 by local citizens and activist groups,” according to Meehan. British writer Philip Pullman’s acclaimed fantasy novel The Golden Compass was named one of the top 100 children’s books of all time GETTY IMAGES/via BBC For her, “these efforts to curb free speech are part of the ongoing campaign across the country to encourage anxiety and anger in order to suppress free expression in public education.” Prohibitions took place in 32 US states, affecting four million children and young people. Most of the books hit by the wave of bans deal with topics such as violence and abuse, health and well-being or cases and themes of death and bereavement. Reasons given by people submitting questions include “propaganda of gender ideology”, “transsexual material”, “support for trans ideology that offends girls/women”, “sexual profligacy”, “alcohol/drug use”, ” LGBTQ content”, “violence”, “anti-police”, “racist”, “obscene”, “pedophilia” and “grooming”. “Over the last 10 to 13 years, LGBTQ books have gotten sexually very visual,” Jennifer Pippin, Florida mother and book questioner, told The Washington Post. Pippin is the founder of the organization Moms for Liberty. She claims that the concern with LGBTQ books is not homophobic, but rather falls on the “sexually explicit” nature of the texts. Toni Morrison’s novel ‘The Bluest Eye’ is one of the most questioned young adult books in the United States. The author received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature GETTY IMAGES/via BBC Censorship and sensitivity “Book questioners are a minority of the population, but they are a vocal and organized minority, determined to impose their will at all levels of society. government,” writer Jonathan Evison told the BBC. “That’s why it’s very important that we be diligent and organized in our efforts to defend freedom of expression.” Evison’s novel Lawn Boy tells the story of a young Mexican American gardener who struggles to find his way among the working class of Seattle, USA. The book ranks seventh on the ALA’s list of most banned titles. Ninety percent of inquiries conducted in 2022 were lists compiled by organized censorship groups, according to the ALA study. Of these, 40% included 100 books or more. “The book questioners developed a manual of sorts – a list of questioned books, with the offensive passages in each work,” according to writer Dave Eggers. His most recent book is the all-ages novel The Eyes and the Impossible. Eggers visited Rapid City, in the US state of South Dakota, after his novel O Círculo (Ed. Cia. das Letras, 2014) was banned from high schools in the city and all existing copies in that school district were destroyed. On May 17, 2023, writer George M. Johnson, PEN America, publisher Penguin Random House, and several other writers and the parents of two school district children filed a lawsuit in Florida court against a county that withdrew books, violating the First and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution. They ask that the books be returned to the shelves of the school libraries where they belong. Johnson is the author of Not All Boys Are Blue, which presents childhood and adolescence from the point of view of a queer black boy. “What gives me hope is that most of the country is against banning books,” he told the BBC. “The fact that bans are driving students to fight for their right to have books. And that we’re winning in many counties and keeping books on the shelves.” “We are motivated, organized and ready to continue this fight for as long as it takes”, continued Johnson. “And banning books hasn’t stopped publishers from getting more stories written. Someday, there will be so many stories that you won’t be able to ban them all.” The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1931-2019), winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a coming-of-age story that examines the effects of racism on a young girl’s psyche. The book ranks third on the ALA’s list of most questioned titles. Morrison once explained that the title of the book was inspired by a black childhood friend who, at the age of 11, told her that she had been praying for blue eyes for two years. “This kind of racism hurts,” Morrison said. “It’s not lynching, murder or drowning. It’s inner pain.” As the BBC honors the top 100 children’s books of all time, the opportunity arises to imagine the children’s books yet to be written (and illustrated), the countless voices yet to be heard and the stories that wait to be told. And consider Morrison’s eloquent argument against the book ban in the PEN America anthology Burn this Book, which she edited: erased from other voices, from novels unwritten, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being heard by the wrong people, forbidden languages ​​flourishing underground, questions of essayists defying authority never being formulated, plays not staged and canceled films – this thought it’s a nightmare. It’s like an entire universe is being described in invisible ink.”

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