This morning, as part of National Library Week, American Library Association released their Top Ten Challenged Books of 2021. Each year, ALA compiles the report and list from information gathered from library staff across the country year-round. Schools, universities, and…
What does the removal of Art Spiegelman’s Maus from the eighth-grade public school curriculum in McMinn County, Tennessee, mean for the future of comic arts censorship? How should concerned members of the comics community respond? The following are excerpts from…
Dual legislation aimed at enacting a “parental library review board” was introduced in Tennessee. The suggested board would be an elected group of adult volunteers who would decide to move or remove books they deemed to contain “age-inappropriate sexual material.”…
Administrators at a Tennessee high school recently ordered the removal of a student’s LGBTQ-themed artwork from a classroom display case after other students complained about it. Principal Bobby Wines of Volunteer High School in Church Hill cited the complaints as…
In response to a Sullivan County, Tennessee parent who wants an entire world history textbook removed from her local school district’s seventh grade curriculum due to what she calls “Islamic indoctrination” in the unit on world religions, CBLDF and its…
The mother of a seventh grader in Sullivan County, Tennessee this week filed a formal challenge to an entire world history textbook because she believes that some parts of the unit on religions amount to “Islamic indoctrination.” Backed by a…
In the past few months we’ve noticed an uptick in a different kind of censorship from what we usually see. Namely, a few schools across the country have assigned their students to read texts that were first edited by hand:…
Upset over the graphic nature of a passage in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a parent in Knoxville, Tennessee is taking her complaint to the district level and attempting to have the book removed from all local county schools.…
When books are challenged in libraries and schools, one of the most important things for governing boards and administrators to do is have a clear and complete challenge policy already in place–and to actually follow it. Since last month the…
