Westmont Hilltop School District, a small district just to the west of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, voted last week to keep The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time as a choice on its summer reading list. The district’s board of…
Tag: pennsylvania
Vandal Destroys PA Library Book Because of Bad Words
A copy of Susan Wigg’s summer romance Lakeside Cottage was returned to the Mifflin County Library in Lewistown Pennsylvania after some anonymous editor had crossed out all the bad words in the entire book with a Sharpie. Library Director Molly…
Pennsylvania School District Retains Handmaid’s Tale on Summer Reading List
School district officials in Wyomissing, PA decided last week to keep The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as an option on a summer reading list for 11th grade Honors English, despite complaints from parents who called the book “obscene” and…
Critical Trump Painting Relocated From PA Art Exhibit
A last minute decision to move a painting explicitly criticizing president-elect Donald Trump to a smaller separate gallery during a Pennsylvania art show is raising concerns in the free speech community. The gouache painting by Brian Wiggins entitled “FUCK TRUMP” was…
West Allegheny Students Petition for Freedom to Read
About 200 students of West Allegheny High School in western Pennsylvania have signed a petition asking that the full text of Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle be restored to the ninth grade reading list, after the assignment was modified…
CBLDF Signs On to Support Transparency in West Allegheny Curriculum Planning
CBLDF today signed on to a letter from the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Kids’ Right to Read Project urging the West Allegheny, Pennsylvania school board to implement a clear policy regarding selection of curricular materials. Concerns arose after Jeanette Walls’…
Censorship 2014: Summer Reading Under Attack
Since most of the challenges and bans that we cover happen in schools, the summers have typically been slow news months for us in past years. So, naturally this year we took notice when challenge after challenge to books that…
Challenge to Jodi Picoult Book Struck Down in Pennsylvania
Earlier this week, the Kennett Consolidated School District school board in Pennsylvania protected the freedom to read by voting 7 -1 to keep Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes on shelves in the high school library. Picoult’s widely-prasied book focuses on a school shooting…
Pennsylvania School Board Rescinds Ban of The Handmaid’s Tale
A Pennsylvania school board, which last month voted to ban Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as a high school summer reading book, has reversed that decision at its subsequent meeting, the National Coalition Against Censorship has learned. As in so…
Victory for Students in “Boobies” Case!
Free expression rights for public school students were resoundingly reaffirmed today, as the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a Pennsylvania school district’s argument that it could prohibit students from wearing breast cancer awareness bracelets that read “I ♥ boobies!”…