11 Comments

Thank you for writing about banned books! They are usually the most important ones, the ones that teach us, open our eyes to issues governments or whoever bans them wish to sweep under the rug, issues they want us to ignore, bury our head in the sand and pretend they don't exist. Banning books never worked and it never will, it only makes their voices stronger, thanks to librarians and people like you, who talk about them, who bring them into focus, and don't let them go into oblivion. What you do is so important! These two books, specifically, sound so important! You put them on my reading list. Also, from someone who grew up in a society with lots of banned books - our grandparents (in our case) and those who still had them before them getting banned- found ways to hide them when they first realized they would become banned, so we had them available - even if not in the libraries. Banned books need us to protect them - and you are doing a great job with that! Thank you!

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I think there’s a whole story in your grandparents hiding books! maybe a book for teens!

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I haven't thought of it, but great idea, thank you!

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It makes no sense Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak should be banned. There are few subjects more important for teens. I googled the crap out of this and could find no reporting connecting Moms for Liberty with this book, let alone saying it "makes boys feel bad". I need more. This is so daffy as to be unbelievable.

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This is also interesting—it’s a look at challenges in one specific place, but notice that the idea that it’s prejudiced against boys doesn’t come up in a challenge until 2021. https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/speak/

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Sep 10·edited Sep 10Author

This is an interesting blog post. Some of the pieces in the citations at the end cover this. https://library.uwsuper.edu/blog/Speak#:~:text=The%2520professor%252C%2520Wesley%2520Scroggins%252C%2520%E2%80%9C,rape%2520and%2520profanity%2520(Winkler).

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Not Moms for Liberty (which I didn’t say anything about in the article) but on making boys feel bad. Interestingly, some boys who talked to Halse Anderson about their POV in situations of accusation were the incitement for her writing “Twisted,” which I mentioned in my post/link to my review of it.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9Liked by Victoria Waddle

Wow, thank you for taking the time to show so clearly why book bans are so harmful

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Thank you for reading it!

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Thank you for writing this important post, Victoria. Every time I read about another book ban, my heart breaks a little.

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It is heartbreaking—these books can do such good!

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