#hat tip

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in A Brave New World (restricted) and that the book burning of Fahrenheit 451 (also restricted) is closer than ever, with no Sense and Sensibility (also restricted) about what this will cost. It feels like we’re going through The Crucible (also restricted) and are caught in a Catch-22 (also restricted) where we can’t convince people how terrible it is to ban books because they either don’t know the power of books or they absolutely know it and fear it. It’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (banned) how book banners go out on some kind of A Discovery of Witches (also banned) and fight against Acceptance (banned) and of diversity, while we are losing All The Beauty in the World (banned). America is a Beautiful Country (banned) in so many ways, but we will lose so much of that beauty if we don’t make Changes (banned) to cherish and embrace and grow what makes us Educated (banned) and compassionate. The diversity of voices is necessary…it is a reflection of who we are and who we want to be. A plethora of ideas and voices and experiences…This Is What America Looks Like (banned). We can’t just pretend that Everything’s Fine (banned) and that this is just an overreaction of Anxious People (banned). Do you think this is what the founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton (banned) envisioned? I’m going to stop here because I’m sure you can see that this dumb paragraph is WAY TOO EASY TO WRITE because there are so many books they have issues with and you probably get the picture already but y’all….Jane Eyre? The Color Purple? The Odyssey? Crime and Punishment?? THIS IS WHAT WE’RE SAVING TEENAGERS FROM?

It’s wild to me that the New Braunfels ISD seems to think that any book for AP Lit is too complex for any other high schooler. I looked through their criteria and definitions, which have no nuance. For instance, a book with a young adult or child as protagonist is assumed to always have children as an audience, and that any book with an adult as the protagonist assumes an adult audience. 🤦‍♀️

More of their “logic”: Books written before 1970 are probably in the public domain (ha!) and won’t have professional reviews in library journals (double ha! Have they never heard of new translations or critical editions? Oh wait, those are probably for AP Lit and should already be automatically moved to the restricted shelves), librarians should point their patrons to free books online.* That assumes that all students have consistent internet access and that all online copies are error-free. Seems like this guideline would conflict with mission and collection development policies of most school and public libraries.

* I do point my patrons to the online version of public domain books all the time because I work at a specialized academic library with a tiny budget and crowded shelves. I strongly encourage patrons to visit the public library across the street to get access to “fun reading” like YA and adult fiction and memoirs (i.e., like many of the ones on these banned books lists). Then I can purchase books like The Deletable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture.