Earlier this week, the Kids’ Right to Read Project, which is sponsored by CBLDF, sent a letter to the Prosser School District outside Yakima, Washington, in defense of A Child Called “It” and The Popularity Papers. Both books had been…
Category: Education
College Paper Sparks Debate Over Social and Racial Commentary in Cartoons
On January 24th, the editorial board of the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s student newspaper, The Badger Herald, decided not to run artist Vincent Cheng’s “Ya Boi, Inc.” comic strip for that day. Cheng’s strip (shown above) depicts a middle-aged man…
Suspended Student Poet Allowed Back to School
We have a quick update on Courtni Webb, the San Francisco high school student who was suspended from school last month after a teacher found a poem that mentioned the Newtown shootings in her private notebook. According to a blog…
California Student Suspended for Newtown Poem
Remember the 16-year-old from New Jersey who was arrested last month after a teacher reported his notebook doodles of “what appeared to be weapons?” Now the same sort of hypervigilance on the part of school officials has caused another teen…
How You Can Report a Library Challenge to ALA
Like CBLDF, the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom is a resource that librarians can call upon for help when facing a book challenge. The OIF maintains a confidential database of information about library challenges, which helps them identify…
Frequently Challenged Alexie Novel Stays on District Reading List
Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is no stranger to library and school challenges, and it survived another one this week in the author’s home state of Washington. The West Valley School District Instructional Materials Committee…
Utah School District Returns Book to Library Shelves
Thanks to a Utah mother and the ACLU of Utah, In Our Mothers’ House, a children’s book featuring a racially diverse family led by lesbian parents, is back in the Davis, Utah, elementary school library without restriction. Earlier this year,…
Move by Tucson School Board May Mean Overturn of Book Ban
Last week, the Tucson school board voted to rescind an objection to “culturally relevant coursework” as part of a plan to desegregate district schools. The move means that the district’s acclaimed Mexican American Studies program may be reinstated, and with…
2012: The Year in Censorship
Now that 2012 has wrapped up and we’re taking our first steps into 2013, let’s pause a moment to take a look at the path behind us. As we look at some of our top censorship stories from 2012, it’s…
Evidence Does Not Support Link Between Video Games and Violent Crime
With Senator Jay Rockefeller’s (D – WV) announcement that he is drafting a bill mandating that the National Academy of Sciences research the effect of video games on children, several sources have been examining the current research on video games…