Updated 11/28/23 - At the request of the school’s reconsideration committee, This Book is Gay was returned to school libraries. 4/7/23 - The National Coalition Against Censorship wrote to the Iowa City Community School District in Iowa concerning the District’s recent temporary removal of Juno Dawson's This Book is Gay pending review of a challenge to the book. This [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has contacted the Florida Department of Corrections to express its concern regarding reports that The Militant was removed from several prisons due to the ideas expressed in the newspaper. The confiscation of First Amendment-protected material affects inmates' constitutional rights. Prisoners have the right to read and must be allowed unfettered access to various informational [...]
Updated 11/28/23 -Upon meeting with local students and media specialists, the Pinellas County Library Review Team returned The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison to school libraries. 2/9/23 - The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written a letter to the Pinellas County School Board in Largo, Florida regarding the district’s recent removal of the book The Bluest Eye by [...]
NEW YORK – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today released a new resource that provides practical advice for authors whose books are being challenged and banned in K – 12 schools and libraries. Prepared in collaboration with writers who have faced censorship, it is available on the NCAC website. Book challenges can be exasperating, demoralizing, and deeply painful for [...]
NCAC contacts Hernando School District in Brooksville, Florida, to express its concerns about the removal of 13 books by Ellen Hopkins from its libraries. A district administrator claimed that the materials are "harmful to minors" under Florida Statute 847, which makes it illegal to provide minors with access to "obscene" materials. This is problematic because, under Florida law, a book [...]
Updated 2/2/23 – NCAC has received a response from the Superintendent of St Lucie Public Schools. He has agreed to follow the district's appeal process and to reconsider the four books that were improperly removed. On 1/18/23 - The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) wrote to St. Lucie Public Schools in St. Lucie, Florida regarding their response to book [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to Batesburg-Leesville Middle School in South Carolina regarding the removal of Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You from the school library. As we understand it, the school removed the book from the library in order to be compliant with South Carolina State Proviso 1.93, which prohibits certain school spending on ideas often [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to Spotsylvania County Public Schools in Virginia, regarding the removal of district library books without following their established review policy. As we understand the situation, in response to a local parent challenging 13 district library books, four were removed by district personnel without following Board Policy IIA*-R. This policy explicitly states [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in Grapevine, Texas, regarding recent policy changes which seem to allow library books to be removed based on the ideas they contain. As we understand the changes to Board Policy EMB (Local), the policy has been amended to restrict the use of instructional materials that advocate [...]
A high school English teacher at Norman School District in Norman, Oklahoma, was recently admonished for sharing a QR Code with students that led to book recommendations from the Brooklyn Public Library. A parent filed a complaint and claimed that recommended materials supported critical race theory, which is against the law in Oklahoma under HB 1775. HB 1775 has put [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the Madison County School Board in Ridgeland, Mississippi, regarding recent restrictions on 10 books, requiring students to obtain parental permission in order to read them. The 10 books in question address race-related or LQBTQ+ themes, and we are concerned that the district may have unconstitutionally targeted these books for the [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the School Board of the Collier County Public Schools in Naples, Florida, after District libraries recently added an “Advisory Notice” to hundreds of library books—raising censorship concerns. Placing advisory notices, or “red-flagging” books often misleadingly reduces complex literary works to a few isolated elements—those that some individuals may find objectionable—rather than [...]
Updated 11/28/2022— NCAC has written an additional letter to the Conroe ISD Board of Trustees. Originally published 8/22/2022— The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the Conroe Independent School District in Conroe, Texas, regarding recently adopted policies which require parental permission to check out allegedly obscene books from libraries while they are under review. Under the new policies, [...]
Kyle Lukoff’s Call Me Max and Jazz Jennings’s I Am Jazz, which both feature transgender main characters, were removed from school libraries in Palm Beach County, Florida, without review. NCAC has written to the district urging them to immediately return the books to library shelves. The removal was purportedly in compliance with Florida House Bill 1557 which was recently signed [...]
NCAC has written to officials at Fredericksburg Independent School District in Texas after numerous books were removed from district libraries without a formal review based on arguments that they are “pervasively vulgar.” The books in question, which include, among others, Jesse Andrews’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, address issues that [...]
When Jerry Craft's New Kid was banned from school libraries in Katy, Texas earlier this year for "pervasively vulgar" content, I defended his book and advocated against this inexplicable censorship. After that, school board meetings in Texas only intensified. After months of persistent demands for intellectual freedom being outnumbered by conservatives and drowned out by more book bans, we finally [...]
Jason Reynolds to headline Banned Books Week 2021, which has the theme, “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.” Two of Reynolds' books for young people made the Top 10 banned and challenged books of 2020 for their handling of issues around racism and racial justice.
The Free Expression Educators Handbook contains practical tools and advice for managing book challenges and censorship controversies in schools and school libraries. The handbook, created by NCAC in collaboration with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), is intended for teachers, librarians, and school administrators. It offers guidance for educators developing inclusive and viewpoint-neutral instructional material policies, including sample [...]
North Carolina lawsuit demands that public schools protect one religious viewpoint above others by banning Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X.
A California school district removed the novel Ghost Boys, which tells the story of a Black boy shot by police, from its curriculum.
When a school board in Alaska voted in April to remove five classic books from a high school reading list, it had no idea that it would outrage many in the community as well as several alumni of the school who are now rock stars. Although the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough School Board reversed its decision a month later, the controversy [...]
President Donald Trump is once again attempting to interfere with the publication of a book that he believes is critical of him. On June 16, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the June 23 release of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, a book by John R. Bolton, Trump’s former national [...]
Following widespread protest by local citizens and national groups, including National Coalition Against Censorship, an Alaska school board has voted 6 to 1 to rescind its decision to remove five classic works of fiction from the reading list for 11th grade English classes. Students will once again be able to read: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya [...]
NCAC opposes proposed legislation threatening Missouri libraries' independence and citizens' freedom to read.
Columbia County Superintendent removed three novels from the proposed high school curriculum despite teachers' recommendations.
Joan Bertin (former executive director, NCAC), Toni Morrison, Fran Lebowitz “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films—that thought is a nightmare. As [...]
We join PEN America, a member of our coalition, in opposing Washington State’s decision to restrict access to used books in prisons.
Often, the most frequently challenged books tell the stories that most need to be heard. The 10 most challenged books of 2017, according to the American Library Association, were no different.
NCAC is in the process of writing to the elementary school underlining that students have a First Amendment right to receive and possess literature, provided the books in question do not cause disruption to school activities.
The objecting New London parents say that the book features “gratuitous and unnecessary” profanity and sexual references.
The parents claim that the school taught solely Islamic religious practices in a World Culture and Geography curriculum, ignoring education in other world religions.
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian were flagged for "explicit, graphic" content.
Terms such as "inappropriate" are vague and over-inclusive, potentially leading to the exclusion of works of undeniable pedagogical value.
In a follow up letter, NCAC stresses the district that banned TKAM/ Huck Finn needs an innocent-until-proven-guilty approach to book challenges.
In his statement, the author of 'Bad Little Children’s Books' has asked ABRAMS not to print another edition of the book, because it has been so widely misunderstood and misconstrued.
Kate Messner speaking event at South Burlington's Chamberlin Elementary School after the school discovered her latest book was about heroin addiction.
An ad hoc committee in Idaho doesn't think high school seniors are ready to read The Namesake. The school board has an opportunity to reject this recommendation and protect the freedom to read.
A Florida high school selected an award-winning novel for its school-wide summer reading list. But a few parents objected to some of the language in the book, and it was promptly pulled.
Has the governor of North Carolina nominated a book censor to the state Board of Education?
Today the Brentwood Public Library board handed down its unanimous decision to keep Uncle Bobby's Wedding, a picture book by Sarah S. Brannen that had recently drawn objections from a patron. Library Director Vicky Wood initially offered a written response to the complaint, affirming the library's duty to provide access to a variety of materials: "Today, even in Brentwood, there [...]
