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These books are banned in Martin County, Florida [1]
['Lisa Tolin', 'Sara Stevenson', 'Pen America']
Date: 2023-03-13 16:02:55+00:00
Last week, Martin County, Florida, released a list of dozens of books it had removed from school libraries, including 20 books by Jodi Picoult, nine books from James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series, and two books by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Some were removed from multiple locations, for a total of 92 book bans.
It appears that the majority of these books were removed in response to a single objector in the district, a local leader with the group Moms For Liberty, who filed forms indicating that she did not actually read any of the books in question. Complaints erroneously stated that all of Jodi Picoult’s books are “adult romance,” and alleged that former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds is “controversial.” John Green’s Looking for Alaska was targeted for being “depressing.”
Send a letter to Martin County asking them to put books back on shelves.
Picoult noted that one of her targeted books, The Storyteller, is a novel about the Holocaust that chronicles the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism in Nazi Germany. “There was a strange irony that a parent wanted this particular book removed, because it felt a bit like history repeating itself,” Picoult wrote in The Daily Beast.
According to district officials, these complaints were heeded to comply with a directive from the Florida Department of Education to “err on the side of caution” when reviewing books, as part of the implementation of a new law, HB 1467.
“The majority of the books that were targeted do not even have a kiss in them,” Picoult wrote. “What they do have, however, are issues like racism, abortion rights, gun control, gay rights, and other topics that encourage kids to think for themselves.”
These are the 84 books banned in Martin County, Florida
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[1] Url:
https://pen.org/these-books-are-banned-in-martin-county-florida/
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