Title: Banned Books Week: What the List Says About Society's Fears | Time
Headings: What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society's Fears
What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society's Fears
Ideas
Most-challenged books of 2001:
Most-challenged books of 2015:
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Content: The ALA usually learns that a book has been challenged either from librarians at schools or public or academic libraries calling in incidents, or from reports in local newspapers. In recent years there’s actually been a decline in reports—the ALA recorded 311 challenges in 2014 and only 275 in 2015. On the surface, that may seem like a good thing—but it probably indicates that fewer people are speaking up when a book is removed, meaning more banning is going on under the radar, LaRue says. “ We have reason to believe that where censorship starts to succeed, there’s less reporting about it,” LaRue says. “ So we can say it’s hard for us to know, we know that challenges are underreported, but we don’t know by how much.” It doesn’t help that school librarians are frequently the victims of school layoffs, meaning there are fewer professionals “trained to use this language of intellectual freedom.” Still, one thing hasn’t changed since the dawn of censorship: having your book banned is very, very good for an author’s sales. “ If what you’re trying to do is stop this book from getting into the hands of a minor,” LaRue says, “the surest way to [fail] is to declare it forbidden.” Subscribe to TIME
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