Book Challenges: Classrooms, Parents, Court

 Pearsey, Eliza

Read the Room | On the Media | WNYC Studios. (2022). WNYC Studios. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-read-the-room

This podcast from WNYC (an NPR affiliate) focuses on how books get challenged and removed from classrooms and libraries, what rights parents have, and the 1982 Supreme Court case that ruled that school boards can’t remove books based on their disagreement of the ideas in them. 

This is a timely and helpful article in 2022. One important point is that when some items are challenged, we as librarians need to make sure we read in context. Generally, people who challenge a book haven’t read it. And because of that the context suffers. For example, in Go Ask Alice, many people point to a passage where she talks about sex, but basically she’s stating that she regrets what she’s done and hopes that one day, some one will genuinely love her. Overall, this could be a beneficial text for students. It's important that context and connotation are taken into account when challenging a book.