Books

The librarians are responsible for curating books and assigning them to the appropriate sections. That said librarians are human and mistakes can happen, if you believe a book is inappropriately categorized speak to a librarian about it (in a respectful manner please) and they will reevaluate the book.

However, while a certain book may generally be appropriate for a certain age range, not every book is appropriate for every reader. While the librarians can offer guidelines, in the end it is the parents responsibility to ensure their child is only checking out materials appropriate for them. This duty cannot be off loaded onto the librarians.

I think this is a targeted nonsense to distract people on a local level from actual serious political issues like crumbling infrastructure, multiple direct threats to democracy, the rise of fascism, and the acceleration of the decline of our material conditions.

I think this book stuff specifically is probably mostly far right astroturfing and then some local groups feeling emboldened by that. Literally never seen this level of local political action in my lifetime, across locations.

Librarians and other library professionals.

At a public library, that's ridiculous. A 10 year old isn't driving to the library, his parent or legal guardian is taking him. It's a bit different in a public school library.

Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read

Well, I just added another book to my TBR. My grandma was the librarian when I was a kid. By age 12, I’d left the kid books in the dust. At that point, I’d read every Dean Koontz and John Saul book in the place. I’d tackled some of Robin Cook’s stuff and was making my way through Stuart Woods. The one and only time my grandmother ever came close to censoring what I read was in high school when I checked out Flowers in the Attic because everyone in school was talking about it. She didn’t bat and eye when I brought it up and checked it out to me. She couldn’t quite hold back the little mutter under her breath though. She said, “That woman is one sick puppy.” She let me have the book though and a couple more in the series afterward. Her little grumble was enough to clue me in that the relationships in the book were not normal which was all I needed to read the book in the right mindset.

Parents should have an idea what their kids are reading and be willing to talk about anything their kid comes to them with. If there’s something in a book that the parent thinks the kid needs some front loading on, they should do so in as brief a way as possible. There are very few books that should actually be denied to kids and those should just be a not yet rather than never.

I am against book banning bu6 I don't want a 10 year old access to a ton of damaging content.

The internet is bad enough, this is a hard nut to Crack but worthy of conversation.

The parent who's with them. If you're worried about what your kid's reading then just check their books before they check out.

Apparently stupid people that cannot read.

"They've told us here that 'Oh no, you can't have parents involved. You must have experts choosing books for the children,'" Harrison says. "That makes no sense. Parents are the primary stakeholders for children."

---- I love comments like these. I would bet any amount of money that at no point did a librarian or educator say "Oh no, you can't have parents involved." When I was a teacher, I would've given anything to have more parents involved.

I don't let my kids have library cards, problem solved!! /s/

I hate this book banning shit, it always goes too far. If you want to homeschool your kid into ignorance that's on you, leave the rest of us alone.

Moms for Liberty and conservative busybodies, that's who! /s

Local community standards, participants in the process who reflect these standards, and those placed in positions of power to enforce determinations are the ones who get to decide. It’s not very hard to figure out in a democracy. The standards of Montana can be different than California and one city in one county might have different standards than another in the same county. But no one in California should have a say in what books should or should not be in a library in Montana or vice versa. Let the communities in which these libraries are decide through the political process and debate what they put on their own shelves.

IMO, publishers should. When they publish a book, they have an audience in mind. Just like movies we have PG-13 and stuff. Books should have the same rating, and we can put this silly stuff behind us.

A public library is just that: a public service facility. To that end, the local community sets the standards and the folks who run the library should ensure the catalog reflects the community standards. Different communities may have different standards. The local libraries should reflect those standards and abide by them.

This is how it has always worked, and it worked well. We need to stop trying to impose some kind of “one size fits all” mentality where the self-appointed power brokers of the coasts tell the rural folks in the Midwest that they suck because they don’t want their kids exposed to books they find objectionable. Likewise, the Midwesterners should not be telling the coast-dwellers how to stock their libraries.

The average age of everyone in the pictures of the book banners has to be 70 or higher.

The point of all of this is to continue stigmatizing non-heterosexuality and transgender. If it is a banned topic, then something must be wrong with it, right? Something must be wrong with me for feeling how I feel, right?

The question that never seems to get asked in any of this “censorship/ban” conversation: Why are authors of YA and child books writing books with such controversial content? Should they? And why are the publishers encouraging them?

This never used to be a problem because both authors and publishers just knew better than to “go there.” Now, it’s like a race to go there. Whatever restraint existed has been blown up, and it has left parents scrambling to hold back the flood when the authors and publishers used be the gatekeepers.

Dumbest shit ever.

Libraries determine what is available.

People determine what they check out.

The issue with letting the community have a free for all to come decide what a 13 year old should be reading is that these are the people who show up to such meetings of the mind. Pic from the article, which some of you haven't read. I don't think busybody boomers on a (usually faith based) moral purity mission should be the ones curating the selection in a public library, period.