The List of Banned and Challenged Books is Out! (Get ready to be shocked and disgusted.)
I remember back in the 90's when schools and public libraries were trying to indoctrinate students with Marxist agendas such as homosexuality and lesbianism (and also global warming, recycling, and endangered rainforests and animals). At the public library in the 90's, I found two books in the children's picture book section: Heather's Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate. Both books told a story of a child with lesbian/gay parents. At the end of Daddy's Roommate, the child's father explains that, "Being gay is just one more kind of love, and love is the best thing there is." This indoctrination has been going on for longer than most people realize. We have become victims of our own trust as we have trusted schools, teachers, school boards, elected politicians, and our own government to do the right thing for us.
The American Library Association has become a leader in the current efforts to indoctrinate children! On their website they explain their equity, diversity, and inclusion policy:
"Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are fundamental values of the association and its members, and diversity is listed as one of ALA's Key Action Areas. The Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services uses a social justice framework to ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives within our profession and association to best position ALA as a trusted, leading advocate for equitable access to library services for all."
How many extreme left buzzwords did you count there?
How does the ALA view censorship requests for books considered harmful to children?
The ALA also publishes lists of censored books in school and public libraries. Censorship, of course, is a bad thing as far as they are concerned. They explain, on their website, that "On August 18, 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) Executive Board issued a statement opposing initiatives to censor information resources, curricula, and programs addressing racial injustice, Black American history, and diversity education." They also explain that, "Public schools and public libraries, as public institutions, have been the setting for legal battles about student access to books, removal or retention of 'offensive' material, regulation of patron behavior, and limitations on public access to the internet." Indeed, the Library Bill of Rights on their website states that, among other things, "Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." Of course, this definitely applies to the efforts to attempt to censor, challenge, or ban library materials that are inappropriate for children. They also provide an informative graphic to show the reasons that books may be challenged or banned (see below). The graphic below shows actual reasons that parents (who put forth 50% of the complaints about library books), church/civic/community leaders, and library patrons cited for their requests to censor certain books as stated at the bottom of the graphic. Did you find "brainwash children" in the graphic? That would be a great reason for parents or others to request that something be banned....if it attempted to brainwash children. But the ALA does not believe anything should be censored for that reason.
The list of 2020 Banned and Challenged Books has been published, and you may access it here.
Some of the book titles might leave you with no surprises as to why someone wanted them banned:
A is for Activist by Tanosanto Nagana (Amazon describes this book for toddlers as follows: "A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for."
Well, you can't start too early when you're trying to raise an activist, can you?)
Gay and Lesbian History for Kids by Jerome Pohlen (just what kids should be learning about!)
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (Amazon's description says this "includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction...")
Well, that book definitely covers a lot of ground!
It Feels Good to be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity by Theresa Thorn
It's Just a Plant: A Children's Story About Marijuana by Ricardo Cortes
Stamped :Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (This book is in my own suburban school district's library. The Bookrags.com summary of this book includes this: "The end of slavery in America did nothing to end the racist ideas circulating in America. Those were still embedded in instructions such as schools, churches, and laws, and thus kept Black Americas subjugated under the same ideologies that defended slavery. From the work of intellectuals of the past such as William Lloyd Garrison, to the present day Black Lives Matter movement, the ideas of inferiority and privilege have been debated, expanded, and swept under the rug, but have never truly gone away. Reynolds takes the time in this book to not only analyze the thoughts and actions of those propagating racist ideas; he also offers his reader an analysis of the many ways Black writers, activists, and artists have advocated on behalf of racial equality, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis." Bookrags.com also includes quotes from the book including one from the character Reynolds when he said, "But whenever people rise up against bad things, bad things tend to get worse. You know the old saying, When the going gets tough, the tough get... racist. Or something like that. (chapter 3, paragraph 2)". Goodreads.com also features quotes from the book including, “The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.” and "“Science says the races are biologically equal so if they're not in society, the only reason why can be racism” and “Racist ideas cause people to look at an innocent Black face and see a criminal.”
This is My Family: A First Look at Same-Sex Parents by Pat Thomas (What ages of children do they appear to be targeting by looking at the cover of this book?)
Who Are You? A Kid's Guide to Gender Identity by Brook Pessin-Whedbee (Do kids need to know about this? Would you want your kids to read this book?)
This list of banned and challenged books also includes How to Talk to a Liberal ( If You Must ) by Ann Coulter and Crippled America by Donald Trump. I find this interesting. There are no liberal political writers who are banned on the list. Why are Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama not banned or challenged? They both wrote books! I might conclude that the Marxists are not tolerant of other political views, and the conservatives are tolerant of differing viewpoints. Therefore, Marxists want to ban viewpoints they disagree with.
TOP 10 MOST CHALLENGED BOOK LIST OF 2020 ( if you are not disgusted enough yet):
This is on the American Library Association website and it includes:
The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (This book sounds innocent enough and is found in my own suburban public school library. Amazon lists it as a "#1 Bestseller in Teen and Young Adult Basketball Fiction". But, this book is about more than basketball. Sparknotes.com includes in a summary of chapters 4-6, "Junior loves geometry, and he is excited for his first high school geometry class. Junior also likes masturbating, and he spends hours in the family bathroom with porn magazines. Everybody masturbates, Junior says, and everybody likes it. But he likes geometry even more than masturbating and imagining women.")
George by Alex Gino (This book is also found in my suburban school district's library and sounds pretty tame. However, Bookrags.com summarizes the first three chapters about the ten-year-old in the novel as such: "George is narrated by a third-person past narrator that focuses in on George, the ten-year-old protagonist of the novel. George is a ten-year-old “secret” girl who the world views and treats as a boy because of her biological body, which appears to be male. The novel consistently refers to George with feminine pronouns.
In the first chapter, “Secrets,” George went home after school and made sure neither her mother nor her brother, Scott, were in the house. Once she affirmed that she was alone, she took out the collection of teenage girl magazines she kept hidden in her closet and brought them into the bathroom. She looked through the magazines and wished she could be a girl named Melissa who was friends with the girls in the magazines. She wished she could wear makeup and pink clothing and have long hair. Scott came home and banged on the bathroom door. George quickly hid her magazines and ran downstairs. After Scott left to go to a friend’s house, George took her magazines back to her closet, then fell onto her bed and wished she could be anyone else.
In “Charlotte Dies,” George’s fourth grade teacher, Ms. Udell, read the chapter of Charlotte’s Web in which Charlotte dies. George was emotionally moved by the scene, and she started crying. Jeff and Rick, two mean boys, started making fun of her. Ms. Udell comforted George and let her go to the bathroom, but she hated having to use the boy’s bathroom. After school, George told Kelly she wanted the role of Charlotte. Kelly said it was cool that George wanted to defy gender norms in the play. George did not have the nerve to tell Kelly it was more than just pretend to her.")
All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendon Kiely (Now surely, with a title like this, All-American Boys HAS to be about good old-fashioned nostalgic American values! Amazon describes this book saying, "In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension." Amazon includes this in its summary of the book: "A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?" Curiously enough, the American Library Association tells us that the book was"Banned and challenged for profanity, drug use, and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views..."
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Before I say anything, try to predict what this innocent-sounding title might indicate the book is about. I bet you didn't guess rascism and pedophilia! Amazon says, "Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison powerfully examines our obsession with beauty and conformity—and asks questions about race, class, and gender with her characteristic subtly and grace." Amazon also says, "In Morrison’s bestselling first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times)."
Well, if the New York Times gushes admiringly about it, that is all you need to know. What else is in this book about an eleven-year-old girl? Sparknotes.com, in part of its summary of the novel states, "Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story and beats her." Later, Pecola finds out that she has been impregnated by her father. Sparknotes also summarizes Chapter 5 saying, "This chapter describes in detail a particular type of black woman. She comes from some small, rural town in the South, full of natural beauty, where everyone has a job. She takes special care of her body and her clothes. She goes to a land-grant college and learns how to do the work reserved for her, the care and feeding of white people, with grace and good manners. She marries and bears the children of a man who knows that she will take good care of his house and his clothes. But she also is a tyrant over her home and over her own body. She does not enjoy sex." Sparknotes also analyzes one of the quotes in the book talking about the women: " Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders. White women said, “Do this.” White children said, “Give me that.” White men said, “Come here.” Black men said, “Lay down.” The only people they need not take orders from were black children and each other." You can decide for yourself if any of this is appropriate for an eleven-year-old to read. In a lot of school districts, even-year-olds are still in elementary school if you need a frame of reference!)
2010-2019 THE TOP 100 BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS
Click below to see it!
One interesting thing I noticed on this list published b the American Library Association is that the The Holy Bible has been challenged. Other religious books held sacred by other religions are not listed. Interesting.
Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan looked alarming just from the title, and it is number 18 on the list. But, the cover of the book is even more alarming.
Amazon has this in its description of the book:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • STONEWALL HONOR BOOK • LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST
"You have to read this.” —Rainbow Rowell, bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Carry On
From the New York Times bestselling author of Every Day, this love story of shared humanity and history Hypable calls "an interconnecting web that will leave you emotionally exhausted and absolutely thrilled to have read something so beautiful and unique."
(Wow! What a lot of awards!!!! Of course one award was received by LAMBDA, the gay and transgender rights organization. The book is about two seventeen-year-old boys, by the way.)
Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg is also on the top 100 list. Amazon says this book is "A comic book for kids that includes children and families of all makeups, orientations, and gender identities, Sex Is a Funny Word is an essential resource about bodies, gender, and sexuality for children ages 8 to 10 as well as their parents and caregivers. Much more than the "facts of life" or “the birds and the bees," Sex Is a Funny Word opens up conversations between young people and their caregivers in a way that allows adults to convey their values and beliefs while providing information about boundaries, safety, and joy." Again, you can never start to talk about gender identities too early. And why don't they want children to have conversations about this with their "parents" instead of their "caregivers"? Are parents called "caregivers" now? Or is this book for school settings? It's a valid question and nothing would surprise me at this point. I bet it's more than just "the birds and the bees"!
FIND NEW BOOKS TO CHALLENGE AND BAN!
I searched my own suburban public school library under the word "gender" for books that the students can check out (several of these were already checked out and being read by some impressionable child) and this is what came up:
Sissy: a coming-of-gender story by Jacob Tobia
Identity: a story of transitioning by Malson Corey (This book is iin the Sullker Teen Topics Series)
She/he/they/me: for the sisters, misters, and binary resisters by Rolyn Ryle
Rick by Alex Gino (Mr. Gino is definitely busy writing grossly inappropriate books for kids. He wrote George on the other lists. Gee, I wonder what this book is about! The Amazon summary of the book says that,"Rick's never questioned much. He's gone along with his best friend Jeff even when Jeff's acted like a bully and a jerk. He's let his father joke with him about which hot girls he might want to date even though that kind of talk always makes him uncomfortable. And he hasn't given his own identity much thought, because everyone else around him seemed to have figured it out. But now Rick's gotten to middle school, and new doors are opening. One of them leads to the school's Rainbow Spectrum club, where kids of many genders and identities congregate, including Melissa, the girl who sits in front of Rick in class and seems to have her life together." Notice that this middle school has many genders...that means more than two, everyone.)
I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver ( I thought this book would be about a birthday wish for a best friend or maybe someone moving several states away. Maybe it was about a breakup. Boy, was I wrong! Never in a million years would I have guessed that this is about a senior (one person) in high school who is nonbinary and comes out to "their" parents!! Amazon writes a summary of the book and says, "When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they're thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met." Notice how they and them and their refer to Ben. Remember, Ben is nonbinary and has more than one gender. Welcome to the new insanity, everyone.
WHAT NOW????
Please realize that what I have included in this blog is just the tip of the disgusting iceberg that our children's morals will crash into. In other words, there is much, much more out there that I did not include in this blog.. People, it is way past the time to get informed and get active in our schools and public libraries. Remember, I gave examples of how this has been going on in schools and public libraries since the 90's. It is also time to get a group of concerned parents together because there is always power in numbers. Visit the school libraries and see what books on these lists they carry for students to check out. Search the library under key words (like "gender", "racism", "police brutality", "rape", "drug use", "sexuality", "violence", etc) for books that are not listed on the American Library Association Lists. Pick up random books off the library shelf and peruse them to see what they contain. Go to your local school boards and present exactly what you find; read parts of the text out loud at the school board meeting. They can't deny it then!!! And read Mark Levin's book American Marxism to get some great information about how schools are indoctrinating students. I highly recommend the book for anyone concerned about our country right now. It is very informative and gives ideas about how to fix our country. I hope that this blog has informed and inspired you. Let's get more informed, involved, and active!!! Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for your concern, and LET'S SAVE OUR KIDS!!!
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