It’s the start of Banned Books Week here in the U.S., “an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. . . . Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted […]
For the third year in a row, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins who care for an orphaned egg and raise a chick, tops the American Library Association’s (ALA) Top Ten list of the Most Frequently Challenged Books. This despite the fact that the book is based on
The 21st Lambda Literary Award finalists were announced this week. The six finalists for the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category are fine books all, although I’m a little disappointed none of them show LGBT parents—as important as it also is to show LGBT kids. Actually, Hit the Road, Manny, is about a gay male nanny, so
The American Library Association’s 2009 Rainbow List of children’s and young adult books with “significant” LGBT content is now out! I interviewed the chair of the Rainbow List Committee, Nel Ward, and the article has just appeared at 365gay.com. I can’t crosspost it yet but I hope some of you will go have a read
(Here’s a longer piece on Banned Books Week I wrote for Bay Windows, October 1, 2008. Seemed a good way to end the week.) This week marks the 27th annual Banned Books Week, the American Library Association’s celebration of the freedom to read. LGBT-inclusive children’s books have long been on the ALA’s list of works
Helen and I celebrate a Banned Books Week full of fur and feathers. We discuss several LGBT-inclusive children’s books as well as an earlier work that was banned for supposedly promoting interracial marriage. We also point out the opportunity parents are missing by avoiding difficult topics with their children, and explain how we are helping
I’ve been using Wednesdays to post recommendations for books about non-traditional (or non-specific), but not necessarily LGBT families. Given that this is Banned Books Week, however, I thought I’d just offer a few more thoughts stemming from that event. Here’s an interesting fact, for example: Nearly half (43) of the books on the Radcliffe Publishing
It’s Banned Books Week once again, the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. Each year, the ALA tracks the books that have received an official challenge, “a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” Judith F. Krug, director of
Maurice Sendak, author of beloved children’s classics such as Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, has just come out. He revealed this in an interview with the New York Times in honor of his 80th birthday, which will be celebrated Monday by a benefit in Manhattan. Sendak has kept his sexuality
A few weeks ago I reported on the first challenge to Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, a children’s book featuring two gay guinea pigs who marry. Today, library director James LaRue, who wrote a sensitive, balanced response to the initial challenge, reports that a second patron has challenged the book and asked for its removal from the
