The number of banned kids books in Texas last year shocked me

I was reading through the PEN America list from 2023 and saw that over 30 titles were pulled from school libraries in just my county alone, mostly picture books. A lot of them were about families different from mine, like "And Tango Makes Three" which is about a real story from the Central Park Zoo. That number seemed way too high for books meant for 5 year olds. Has anyone else seen similar numbers pop up in their state?

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patricia_wells1mo ago

My neighbor is a school librarian here in Texas and she told me something that really stuck with me. She said the books that get banned are often the ones that get kids to actually talk to their parents about things like adoption or different family structures. The parents who push for these bans admit they just don't want to have those conversations at home, so they'd rather the books just disappear. To me, that missing conversation is a bigger loss than any story on a shelf.