“I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. “It’s both the number of challenges and the types of challenges. Once a parent had learned about a given book and had a problem with it. Now we’re seeing campaigns where organizations are compiling lists of books, without necessarily reading or even looking at them.” ALA has documented 681 book challenges in the first eight months of this year, involving 1,651 different titles. Throughout 2021, the ALA listed 729 challenges, addressing 1,579 books. Because the ALA relies on media accounts and reports from libraries, the actual number of challenges is likely much higher, the library association believes. Friday’s announcement coincides with Banned Books Week, which begins Sunday and will be promoted across the country through tabletop displays, posters, bookmarks and stickers, and through readings, essay contests and other events highlighting the competing works. According to a report published in April, the books most targeted include Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir about sexual identity, “Gender Queer,” and Jonathan Evison’s “Lawn Boy,” a coming-of-age novel told by a young gay man. “We see this trend continuing in 2022, criticism of LGBTQ-themed books,” Caldwell-Jones says, adding that books about racism, such as Angie Thomas’ novel “The Hate U Give,” are also often challenged. Banned Books Weeks are overseen by a coalition of writing and free speech organizations, including the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Writers Guild, and PEN America. Conservative attacks on schools and libraries have proliferated nationally in the past two years, and librarians themselves have been harassed and even fired from their jobs. A high school librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, has filed a legal complaint against a Facebook page that called her a “criminal and a pedophile.” Voters in a western Michigan community, Jamestown Township, supported drastic cuts to the local library over objections to “Gender Queer” and other LGBTQ books. Audrey Wilson-Youngblood, who in June resigned from her job as a media library specialist in the Keller Independent School District in Texas, laments what she calls an “erosion of credibility and competence” in how the her profession. At the Boundary County Library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, library director Kimber Glidden recently resigned after months of harassment that included chanting Bible passages that refer to divine punishment. The campaign started with a single complaint about “Gender Queer,” which the library didn’t even have in stock, and escalated to the point where Glidden feared for her safety. “We were accused of being pedophiles and pampering children,” he says. “People were showing up to library board meetings armed.” Virginia Library Association Executive Director Lisa R. Varga says librarians in the state have received threatening emails and been videotaped on the job, tactics she says are “nothing like what anyone in this career would expect. I see.” Becky Calzada, library coordinator for the Leander Independent School District in Texas, says she has friends who have left the profession and colleagues who are scared and “feel threatened.” “I know some people are worried about promoting Banned Books Week because they might be accused of trying to push an agenda,” he says. “There is a lot of fear.” —Hillel Italie, The Associated Press BC teacher suspended for 15 days for sharing ‘Stop SOGI 123’ leaflets with PAC member RELATED: The Minister of Education of P.K. and partners in K-12 education issue a statement in support of SOGI Books
