We received some great news from Kentucky this morning: a reconsideration committee in Marion County voted to keep John Green’s highly acclaimed first novel Looking for Alaska on its high school shelves last night. The book received a complaint from a parent who not only refused to let his child read the book, but determined it was "filth" and good [...]
One parent doesn't want any students -- or adults -- to read John Green's renowned young adult novel.
Banning a John Green novel didn't work out. But the superintendent's new idea to rate library books would create enormous problems.
What's happening in the Garden State? Right after Banned Books Week, we saw two efforts to remove books from public schools.
A New Jersey superintendent made an ad hoc decision to pull Looking for Alaska from classroom libraries, in violation of district policy.
Update: Another victory for KRRP! Last night, the board voted 3-2 to reinstate the book to middle school libraries. Read more about the decision here. In October, CA's Riverside Unified School District raised some eyebrows when a review committee decided to yank John Green's acclaimed The Fault in Our Stars from the district's middle school libraries. The reason? Age-appropriateness; the committee, in a [...]
NCAC along with seven other other free speech organizations sent a letter to the Riverside Unified School District urging the School Board to reinstate The Fault in Our Stars by John Green to middle school libraries. A reconsideration committee voted to remove the book after a parent of a middle school student raised objections to the novel's language and sexual content. The [...]
Author John Green’s work has once again come under the censorship chopping block, this time in Riverside, California. His award-winning love story, The Fault in our Stars, was taken out of middle school libraries because the novel’s subject matter involves two terminally-ill teens who use crude language and have sex. “I just didn't think it was appropriate for an 11-, [...]
Update 7/16: Paper Towns has reappeared on the latest version of the John Long Middle School summer reading list! Previously: NCAC's Kids' Right to Read Project has expressed concerns over the removal of John Green's award-winning novel Paper Towns, from the 8th grade summer reading list at John Long Middle School in Pasco County (FL). A parent who objected to sexual content and references in the book expressed her concerns in an email to a member of the school board, who in turn forwarded the message to school officials on Friday, June 20. By the following Monday, the book had been removed from the reading list, even though the objecting parent did not request the book’s removal, but merely complained because she had not been alerted to its content.
