Gender Queer is the most challenged book in the United States for the third year in a row, according to the American Library Association's new report.

Here's a 2 page PDF of info graphics on 2023 challenge trends.

Actions you can take to counter book bans and challenges.

every time I look at what movies are coming out I get tireder

“As a child I paid very little attention to authors’ names; they were irrelevant; I did not believe in authors. To be perfectly candid, this is still true. I do not believe in authors. A book exists, it’s there. The author isn’t there — some grown-up you never met — may even be dead. The book is what is real. You read it, you and it form a relationship, perhaps a trivial one, perhaps a deep and lasting one. As you read it word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and reread, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. Where, in all this, does the author come in? Like the God of the eighteenth-century deists, only at the beginning. Long ago, before you and the book met each other. The author’s work is done, complete; the ongoing work, the present act of creation, is a collaboration by the words that stand on the page and the eyes that read them.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from “Books Remembered,” Children’s Book Council Calendar xxxvi:2 (November 1977)

I went to the library to borrow some DVDs we're planning to watch, but when I handed the librarian my card, it took me a solid 15 seconds to register that I handed her my fucking weed card.

Me, fumbling to swap it out: "OH MY GOD, I AM SO SORRY, I was on total autopilot!!"

The librarian: "It's all good, I just assumed it was a flex."

loml, the libby app

the fine folks (derogatory) at the guardian pearl clutching about teens maybe reading sexy books because of the nefarious influence of booktok is making me want to throttle someone it is perfectly fine and safe for teens to read horny books due to they are in complete control of their experience and no one else is involved oh my godddddddd

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

so back when i was teaching, one of the things i learned to look for were the "mood makers", as i liked to call them, of the classes. there were always 2 or 3 per class, and it was easy to find them in the first few days. you got those kids on your side, and it was a ripple effect with the rest of the students - they would all follow. so winning those kids over was huge when it came to how the year would play out. and from time to time, whenever the class was sort of faltering - middle of winter, of a big project, burn-out high - i would lean back in on those mood makers again to turn things around.

one particular class, when we had a big multi-month group project happening, were just... really struggling with getting their shit together lol. they were supposed to be practicing their presentations (english speaking class) and they were doing pretty much anything but, and their presentations were supposed to start the next class day. they were also PANICKING as i started giving out some feedback - which was NOT GREAT - as they were running through the lines they were supposed to be remembering. after realizing all of them needed so much extra work, i decided we needed to have a turn-around, so i invited one of the mood makers up to the front. i held out a cup to him, with two papers inside.

"one of them," i said, "says tuesday, and if you draw that, presentations go as planned. but one of them says thursday, and if you choose that one, everyone gets extra time to practice."

everyone was like OH SHIT. OKAY. THIS IS IT. and this mood maker, he was a big personality (they usually are) so i knew he'd really ham this up, and he did. we made a huge deal, with drum-rolls and everything, of him picking one out of the cup. he opened it up the paper and announced THURSDAY to a round of huge cheers. he was the class hero. everyone had TONS of motivation to work super hard on this gifted extra day, and really put the time in. their presentations were great. morale SOARED.

the plot twist was that both papers said thursday, because they all needed the extra time. my forever teacher advice: find creative ways to make things happen so that you get the buy-in from the class.

THIS PICTURE JUST MADE MY LIFE.

Suzanne Collins gripping my face with her hands: listen listen the first step to evil is dehumanisation, always, the second you start to see people as less than people no matter what they've done to you that's when you start heading down a path of selfish destruction and violence

Also if you regularly work with kids/teens I cannot stress how important it is that you know someone who's like really into lame emo junk. There was a girl my dad was working with who just flat out refused to talk to adults or anyone at all and one day I was there and I saw her wearing a homemade bracelet that had beads that said YLDNDAHFHHACYCSYCDAYDKK and since I was also once a 14 year old making niche homemade mcr merch I was like "oh my god you like dnd Audrey Hepburn Fangoria Harry Houdini and croquet you cant swim you can't dance and you dont know karate!!!" and she looked at me like I'd said literal magic words and now we talk about music all the time

that’s us in the news again! <3

I don't know how to break it to you all but a bad parent will parent badly with books and a good parent will parent well with an iPad.

Ipads don't make the "ipad kid". What upsets you is a child who is being given something distracting and potentially obnoxious to those around them so that the parent doesn't have to deal with engaging with their child. And it's not new.

I grew up before the invention of the ipad and the complaints were the same. It was "tv kids" and "Gameboy kids". And it was book kids too, though people rarely complained about those kids because it didn't make noise and bother them personally so they no longer cared. Because the "it's for the good of the child!" argument dried up real fast as soon as it was something that didn't affect them.

A good parent who is engaging with their child's interests can do so with an iPad or television. A bad parent can say "take this and leave me alone" with a book or a toy. The problem is that some kids were raised by objects. By whatever kept them busy and entertained and away from their parents. Sure, there are parents who need to realize that's what they're doing and would benefit from changing their parenting style by limiting electronics use, but "if you give your kid an electronic toy, it means you're a bad parent" is not the same thing and largely misses the actual source of the problem.

Your arbitrary standards of what "good children" doing "good child activities" is as restricting.

Grover asking percy if he's read the story of Odysseus and Percy saying "the graphic novel" and getting a judgey look in response, and him immediately defending, "it counts!" Absolutely it counts!! Say that, Percy! GRAPHIC NOVELS COUNT!!!!

from ml.books

Whatever gets people in the door i guess