COLUMN: Viewpoint – The ABCs of book banning

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2024 (772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I saw a documentary nominated for a 2024 Oscar called The ABCs of Book Banning. The film introduces the growing number of books being banned from American schools and public libraries.

Biographies of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King have been banned as well as books by Black writers like Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, Angie Thomas best-selling author of The Hate U Give and Amanda Gorman who vaulted to fame with the poem The Hill We Climb which she wrote and recited at the Biden inauguration.

In addition to targeting Black characters and writers, many books being banned have LGBTQ themes or authors. I know some of the books well. One is a beautifully illustrated picture book called Tango Makes Three about two male penguins caring for a baby chick. It is in my church library.

Another is a novel called Melissa about a ten-year-old child struggling with gender identity. As a university faculty supervisor I watched one of my student teachers use the book as a teaching tool to great effect in her upper elementary classroom. She helped the kids learn to ask questions, apply critical thinking skills, and develop empathy as they read the story together.

What is unique about The ABCs of Book Banning compared to other films I have seen on the topic is that it features many children talking about the books that have been banned, books they have read.

The kids are trying to understand why certain books have been pulled from their school and public library shelves. Their logic and ideas are direct and hit home more than the words of any adult could.

While the film includes the reactions kids have to book banning it begins and ends with a clip of a 101-year-old woman named Grace Linn, who visits a Florida school board meeting to warn them about the danger of banning books.

She tells them her husband fought in the Second World War to stop the Nazis who were burning books. She says banning books in America in the present day is done for the same reason as the Nazis burned books, “Fear of knowledge.” Grace then shows the school board a quilt she has made featuring books that have been banned in the United States.

In Canada there are also groups devoted to banning books. A July Macleans article by British Columbia teacher librarian Richard Beaudry reminds readers of a Supreme Court Case in 2002 where the justices ruled that a B.C. school board was wrong to ban children’s books that favourably depicted same sex marriage. The written verdict ruled that ‘tolerance is appropriate for children to learn about at any age.’

Professor Kit Dobson wrote an op ed last week in the Toronto Globe and Mail about a study of the most commonly banned books he carried out with his students at the University of Calgary. They found virtually all of the banned books provided sincere and meaningful explorations of cultural and social issues. Another thing their research discovered was that many people asking schools and public libraries to ban books hadn’t read the books themselves. Large book banning organizations have websites that label books unsuitable and that’s enough for some to complain about a book. They don’t even read it.

Professor Dobson said those of us who oppose book banning can make a difference just by reading and buying the books being banned and checking them out of libraries. Feb. 18 to 24 was Freedom to Read Week. Freedom to read isn’t just a slogan it’s something we need to work hard to protect.