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Challenged Books in Iowa: Banned Books Week [1]
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Date: 2013-07-24 13:57:34-04:00
Free societies read freely!
The ACLU of Iowa is dedicated to preserving our First Amendment right to decide for ourselves what we read, view, and hear—a fundamental element of free speech and expression.
Banned Books Week is observed annually in late September to celebrate the First Amendment and draw attention to the censorship of literature in public schools.
The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks books that have been challenged, often by parents of students, to be removed from public and school libraries. Classic books such as Brave New World and The Catcher in the Rye, and newer titles, such as the Gossip Girl series and Twilight, have been on "challenged" lists for reasons including explicit language, sexual content, and violence.
See a listing of books that have been challenged in Iowa below.
Recently, parents, community members, and politicians in communities across the state have been demanding that books they find objectionable be removed from school libraries and classrooms. Most of the books contain LGBTQ content. Many of the books are award winners, and all are vetted by librarians and teachers for appropriate content. Certainly, parents of schoolchildren have control over what their child reads, and they can work with their student's teacher and school to limit their access to certain books. But schools should not remove access to these books for all children in the classroom or school.
Read a run-down of recent book challenges in Iowa here.
At the Vinton Public Library this year, two directors resigned because of efforts to purge LGBTQ books. Our statement on that situation can be found here.
Also, in Logan, Iowa, recently a local author's book about her family was challenged.
In 2018, Orange City was a hot spot for concerns about book banning. In 2018, a petition was circulated in Orange City, demanding that the local library segregate and label books and content that have any LGBTQ content and halt the acquisition of any more. The library has since simply revised its overall classification of books by topic rather than author. Later that year, a man objecting to children's books at the library with LGBTQ content burned them and shared a video of it on social media.
In other cases, specific books have been challenged. The following is a listing of books that have been challenged since 2005 in Iowa libraries because they contained references to sex, had LGBTQ references or characters, swear words, violence, mentions of violence, or mentions of suicide or drug use.
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[1] Url:
https://www.aclu-ia.org/en/challenged-books-iowa-banned-books-week
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