Calm Down

We're not banning books. Heavens no. We are just refusing to allow them in circulation because *one* person submitted a list of books they object to. https://t.co/rOZX39nh7f pic.twitter.com/2owWHXLhUP

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) November 10, 2021

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's how the process works. Everybody gets a say, including you, including the people whose ideas you don't like.

I hate book banning with a passion.  But I also know it's a minority of students who use the library in the first place, and that minority gets smaller and smaller as you move up the grade levels.  Asking a committee of administrators and librarians to review a book for appropriateness is not exactly yanking it out of a curious child's hands, much less starting a bonfire on the school playground.  Libraries buy books in bulk; some of them may include inappropriate illustrations (the rise of graphic novels has made this more and more possible). Checking those books for grade levels is not the same thing as book burning or thought control.

Many of the reviews that have been done have returned the books to the shelves, or found they are appropriate for some grade levels, but not for others.  It's the way the system works.

What I vaguely remember from being a kid is that if you are old enough to read difficult content you are probably the best judge of whether you can manage it.

Also, kids are interested in banned books.

Here is a list of the books this Kansas school district has banned. pic.twitter.com/aaGHxEncUe

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) November 10, 2021

Yeah, I remember hearing our high school librarian had pulled Cat's Cradle because a conversation between the narrator and a prostitute implied they ended up doing business together.  By that time those of us who were reading Vonnegut already had a copy, and a year earlier we were all discussing the wedding sex scene on page whatever of The Godfather which probably never made it to the school library either (although these days I wouldn't be surprised to see it there).  We all had our own copies.  I read my way through two of the three libraries of the public schools I attended (found some pretty decent porn in the UT library, but I was an adult by then).  I don't know too many students who did that.  I also read Kierkegaard in high school, without much understanding it.  I didn't find that in any library in town.  Keeping books off library shelves is not something I favor; but neither does it lead to the closing of the American Mind.  That door is more often never even opened, in my experience.

Although this is another matter:

Conservative school board members propose public burning of 'sexually explicit' library books https://t.co/mHhMzdHDCJ

— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 10, 2021

I do like this comment from one of the would-be book burners: 

...fellow board member Kirk Twigg added that he wants to "see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff."  

That's "porn is bad, but I have to review it first to SEE how bad it is!"  And book burning is well into "If it was good enough for the Nazis" territory.  But because two board members asked for it, doesn't mean it will happen. If anything, it's cause to vote those two clowns off the board at first chance.

Calm down.  I know the internet is an outrage manufacturer, and it's primary product is pissed off people.  Don't be one of them.