Posted in censorship, challenged books on May 13, 2008 | No Comments »
Photo credit: florian.b on flickr
The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom just published their list of the top ten banned books from last year. I haven’t read Olive’s Ocean or TTYL yet, but if they really are sexually explicit and have offensive language I will probably enjoy them immensely.
1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin [...]
Posted in challenged books, sex on March 26, 2008 | No Comments »
I went to Portland for the long weekend. Portland is fantastic. There is Voodoo Donuts, a donut shop that doubles as a wedding venue and Swahili language school. There are also lots of fantastic independent bookstores like Powells and Reading Frenzy.
I am often puzzled by the United States. The American Booksellers [...]
Posted in challenged books, school libraries, sex on February 25, 2008 | No Comments »
This is a fantastic and funny rant from author John Green about a high school that is requiring parental consent forms for students to read and study his first book Looking for Alaska. He describes the frank sex scene in this book as “alkward, unfun, disasterous and wholly unerotic.”
He argues:
Hank, it doesn’t take deeply [...]
Posted in censorship, challenged books, challenges, children's books, filtering, research on February 1, 2008 | No Comments »
CLA Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom released the results (7 page Word document) from their survey of challenges in Canadian libraries today.
Items challenged ranged from Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby to The Golden Compass; books, graphic novels and film; and internet filtering.
Almost all of the challenges resulted in the item being kept [...]
Posted in challenged books, challenges, survey on January 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Check out this short web survey that the CLA Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom has put together. This second annual survey is intended to help the Committee develop documentation about challenged resources and policies in Canadian libraries. This initiative supports Canada’s Book and Periodical Council’s (BPC) Freedom to Read campaign as the results will be shared [...]
Posted in LGBT, Little Sister's, challenged books, queer on December 9, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Jane Rule — author, activist, Order of Canada recipient, former UBC writing instructor — died last week. Out as a lesbian, and writing novels with lesbian characters before Canada’s homosexuality-banning laws were changed in 1969, she was dubbed “Canada’s only visible lesbian”.
Several of Jane Rule’s books, including “The Young in One Anothers’ Arms” which [...]
Posted in LGBT, challenged books, challenges, children's books, public library on December 5, 2007 | No Comments »
King and King was challenged in the public library in Allentown, PA. King and King is a kids picture book about a prince who rejects a bevy of babes to chose Lee as the one he wants to marry. The library director’s comments are spot on and to the point:
Kathee Rhode, the library’s director, said [...]
Posted in censorship, challenged books, challenges on November 28, 2007 | 2 Comments »
The topic of censorship hyping sales and piquing interest in a title has come up a couple of times this week.
Over coffee and bagels, Greyson on Social Justice Librarian wondered if the media coverage of the Toronto Catholic schools who have pulled The Golden Compass and the other two books in the trilogy isn’t benefiting [...]
Posted in challenged books, challenges, children's books, school libraries on November 27, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Concerns that the books are “anti-God, anti-Catholic and anti-religion”.
Read more at the CBC (1, 2, 3). Make your own card catalog cards at John Blyberg’s site.
Posted in censorship, challenged books, challenges, children's books, school libraries on November 14, 2007 | No Comments »
BC writer Nikki Tate’s book Trouble on Tarragon Island was banned by the school librarian at Elizabeth Elementary in Kindersley, SK. The Globe and Mail has run two articles on this (Nov 13 and Nov 7) but you probably won’t be able to read them on their site as you need to pay for [...]
