In the 2023-2024 school year, book bans were up 200% in the United States. Multiple states, including Florida and Iowa, have passed laws prohibiting books deemed too mature to be stocked in high school libraries, while an Idaho law passed last July — HB 710 — expands that prohibition to public libraries.
The Idaho law specifically forbids anyone under the age of 18 from accessing books considered "harmful to minors," including books depicting "sexual conduct." That affects classics like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, as well as bestsellers like The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin, adapted by HBO as Game of Thrones. Even books specifically written to address questions that teenagers have, like The “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Girls by Lynda Madaras, are on the chopping block.
Some publishers are pushing back. Per The Guardian, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperColins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks have filed a lawsuit alleging that the Idaho law's definition of "harmful" is "vague and overbroad." The lawsuit is similar to ones filed in Florida and Iowa. Plaintiffs in the Idaho case also include three authors, a public library district, the Authors Guide, a teacher, two students and two parents.
The way the law works is that it allows private citizens to file complaints about schools and libraries they think are violating the law, which the lawsuit argues puts librarians “in the untenable position of having to guess whether any member of the public might file an objection to a book whose message they disagree with.” Those books then must be removed. Other options include cordoning them off in an adults-only section or turning the library into an adults-only library. Donnelly Public Library, one of the plaintiffs, lacks the resources to review all the books in its collection and isn't large enough to have an adults-only section, so it converted to being an adults-only library, meaning that no one under 18 can enter without their parent or guardian completing a three-part waiver. Obviously, circulation has tanked, with far fewer books checked out. “Our programming – which includes the only option for after-school care in Donnelly – has been severely impacted, with children unable to step inside the building to use the bathroom or keep warm without a complex waiver,” said the library’s director Sherry Scheline.
With President Donald Trump planning to shut down the Department of Education, I can't imagine the rising interest in preventing kids from reading books is going to abate anytime soon. Lawsuits of the kinds these publishers are bringing may be one of the only tools people can pin their hopes on if they want to maintain access to books and to keep libraries available for the communities to use. The more people speak out about this kind of thing at the local, state and federal levels, the better.
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