That stat about banned children's books from ALA shocked me

I was looking up banned books for my kid's school project and found a report from the American Library Association. Turns out over 2,500 unique titles were challenged in 2023 alone, which is way more than I thought. The top reasons were violent content or LGBTQ themes. I found this on the ALA's official website under their state of libraries report. It made me wonder how many books we actually miss out on because of a few people complaining. Has anyone else looked into this and found something surprising?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel_rivera24d ago

Well damn, that number is honestly way higher than I would've guessed too. It makes you wonder how many good books just get quietly pulled from shelves before anyone even gets a chance to read them. From what I've seen, a lot of those challenges come from like two or three vocal people, not the whole community.

the_uma24d ago

Yeah, @daniel_rivera, best way to handle it is to show up to the board meeting and speak calmly.