american library association

Penguins Top Challenged Books List Yet Again

For the fourth time, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three, based on the real-life story of two male penguins who raise a chick from an orphaned egg, tops the American Library Association’s (ALA) latest Top Ten list of the Most Frequently Challenged Books. The penguins take over again after slipping to number two […]

Rainbow Bibliography to Help LGBTQ Youth

With all the recent media attention about the need to support LGBTQ youth, it is notable that the American Library Association (ALA) is in its fourth year of giving librarians the tools to do just that.

Gay Author Wins Prestigious Children’s Literature Award

In all my excitement over the latest Rainbow Bibliography and Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, I neglected to mention that prolific children’s author and illustrator Tomie DePaola–who happens to be gay–won this year’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award from the American Library Association. The award “honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”

Rainbow Bibliography Helps Librarians Help LGBTQ Youth

The American Library Association (ALA) has published its fourth annual Rainbow Bibliography, a list of recommended children’s and young adult books with significant LGBTQ content. The list is a yet another arrow in the quiver of those looking to support LGBTQ youth and children of LGBTQ parents—and I don’t need to tell you how important that is these days.

Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award Winners Announced

Congratulations to Brian Katcher, whose young adult novel Almost Perfect won the inaugural Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award from the American Library Association (ALA). The award, which honors children’s and young adult books “of exceptional merit” related to the LGBT experience, was announced this morning at the ALA’s annual Youth Media Awards, which also

New Award for LGBT Children’s and Young Adult Books

Go librarians. The American Library Association (ALA) this week announced it will add an annual award for “English-language works for children and teens of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered experience.”

Happy Banned Book Week!

It’s Banned Book Week once again—the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. I’ll refer you back to the piece I wrote for Banned Books Week last year, “Penguins, Rabbits, and Guinea Pigs: In Celebration of Banned Books,” noting that LGBT-themed books continue to be banned or challenged, as a July case

Tell Florida County Not to Segregate Books

In the same month that the American Library Association came out with its annual list of the Most Frequently Challenged Books, two Florida moms have stepped up their campaign to have libraries put a “Warning: Mature Content” label on any young adult books that refer to illegal acts or contain “inappropriate” content and to segregate

Penguins Lose Top Spot on Challenged Books List

Author Lauren Myracle’s young adult series ttyl has topped the American Library Association’s (ALA) Top Ten list of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2009. A “challenge” is a formal, written complaint to a library or school, “requesting that materials be removed or restricted because of content or appropriateness.” Ttyl gives us a look at

2010 Rainbow Bibliography Highlights LGBT Books for Kids

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.) The American Library Association’s Rainbow Project has just published its third annual Rainbow Bibliography, a list of recommended, LGBT-inclusive books for readers under age 18. Nel Ward, head of the Rainbow Project, says one of the biggest problems librarians have with including LGBT-inclusive books in their collections is

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