Rant: A librarian in Spokane told me I was reading banned books wrong

So I used to only read the 'big name' banned books like Huckleberry Finn or 1984. Then a librarian in Spokane, this older lady, said I was missing the point. She told me to check out local school board ban lists from the 90s, and I found this novel called 'The Giver' that got pulled from a middle school in Texas for being 'too dark'. Realized I had no idea how deep these bans go until I looked at smaller districts. Anyone else dig into state-specific ban records instead of just the national headlines?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannah_williams6d ago

Ngl that librarian was actually onto something important. The national banned books list gets all the attention but the real craziness is happening in small town school boards nobody watches. Did any of those local bans surprise you with how recent they were or what they targeted? I found a district in Ohio that pulled a book about a Vietnamese immigrant family in 2005 and that was way more eye opening than the usual 1984 stuff.

fiona_sullivan296d ago

Honestly that Ohio one got me too. It's wild how these bans aren't just about the "big" controversies everyone talks about. But I've noticed this pattern where the books getting pulled are usually the ones that make kids think about things differently, not the ones that are actually inappropriate. Like the Vietnamese family book probably challenges a certain idea of what "American" means and some people just can't handle that. Idk but it feels like these local boards are really just trying to protect a very narrow view of the world. And the sad part is nobody catches it because they're too busy arguing about the same five popular titles on the news.