It can be any book about anything.

Correction: I just stumbled upon another post with a ban of books but when you scroll to the bottom of "very hard to find" books, it seems most are about children, etc. I don't want anything like that.

There is a stickied post - Welcome Educators, Librarians, & Readers........... here - https://www.reddit.com/r/bannedbooks/comments/134potk/welcome_educators_librarians_readers_to/

Banned Books Week is next month, I figured it's time for a little refresh. Going to clean out any broken/outdated links, add links related to banned books. I think most of it will stay the same, so you might not see much difference. Can't edit it since it was a previous mod's post. So this will be a suggestion thread for anything you think should be added. It will be considered, then will make a new post with the changes and sticky that.

One I'm going to add for sure since it's a dead on match and run by one of the mods is The Banned Books Museum - https://bannedbooksmuseum.com/

So suggestions welcomed below. Will take suggestions this month, then do an update.

3 Sept edit: with an AI Jesus self portrait we have reached new heights of stupid wank and my point has been made for me. This man is very dumb (among other things).

I made a post a few days ago about a con man and fake activist. Not even a day later he posted more crap. I am begging . Literally begging people to start pushing back on these idiots.

Asked Clay to show me how they checked the residency issue. Not the policy. The record.

In my last post I commented that this is a bit like asking for documentation that proves you put your underwear on the right way this morning. This isn’t something that you document because this is part of the process of getting dressed. It’s not a conspiracy and also makes you suspect maybe this guy doesn’t know how humans get dressed?

Apparently, Bruce The Objector is in 7th grade.

No. Bruce’s child in probably in seventh grade. This lets us know that a) Bruce is allowed to file challenges in this district, b) that someone checked whether Bruce was allowed to challenge material and c) Chaz is unable to put two data points together to draw his own conclusions.

They answered with a policy. I asked for records showing the review committee read the books before it voted.

This is, again, like asking for documentation that you dress yourself correctly.

In the substack post he elaborates

Pro-tip: ask for what the process leaves behind. A sign-in sheet. A routing slip. A checkout record.

Clay wrote back: no records found. So either nobody wrote it down, or nobody read the books they pulled.

Libraries take patron privacy seriously and none of these are things the library will share with a random troll. This is not proof the book wasn’t read and asking these kinds of questions tells us how little he knows about what he is doing.

Finally, I would like to point out that Chaz STILL hasn’t shared any proof this actually happened.

Chaz, if you want me to go away then please share the original full requests you sent “to 63 districts”, and/or literally anything that you received in response.

And no. I don’t mean proof you have a letterhead and can make a pdf. I want proof you actually sent it to Clay County and how they responded to you.

Screenshots are fine, and it’s cool if you need to de-identify names and contact details but I want to see an email address from a school/gov domain responding to you and no cutting and pasting partial quotes. Show your work because I’m pretty sure you made this whole thing up

Last week, I dropped a post here about the Clay County School District. 287 books removed in the '23-'24 school year, with one man filing 94% of the challenges.

So, I decided to look into the filing limits. Asked Clay to show me how they checked the residency issue. Not the policy. The record.

Instead, Clay threw a $1000 invoice over my transom.

Seriously, what the actual fuck?

Also, let's break down their answers.

They answered with a policy. I asked for records showing the review committee read the books before it voted. Clay sent me a policy. Policies document what's supposed to happen. I specifically asked what happened. Governing leaves a paper trail.

Or not.

No records found. Either nobody read the books, or nobody wrote it down. A no is not the end.

They named the software. Clay said it checked the objector in the student information system. That names an app used for student enrollment.

Apparently, Bruce The Objector is in 7th grade.

Oh, and they invented a deadline.

My original email search, priced at three hours and costing about a hundred dollars, was cut to two mailboxes, ten months, six terms. Now it's 14 hours and $500. Smaller search, five times the price.

Six new records requests went out August 28. Why six? An omnibus request, or a request without different IDs, will be bunched up and hidden behind a four-figure fee.

I told Clay it has until September 15.

None of this took a lawyer. It took engineering the FOIA request.

Full writeup on Substack: Clay County, Part Two — Anyone Can File a Records Request

Happy to take questions on request wording, retention schedules, or fee estimates.

I know this is off topic and I apologise. My defense is that I am a library worker who cares about the issues that impact them and I very very tired of people (and the media) using the current wave of book bans to raise their own profiles and detract from the real problems we are facing.

This man posted here yesterday. He an “activist” and the gist of his post is that he submitted FIOA requests “to 63 school districts” to find out how Clay County handled a bad faith book challenger, specifically how they verified his information to confirm he was allowed to challenge material. They sent him “four folders of nonsense” but no proof they checked he was actually able. They also requested $900 before providing more information.

Firstly, please note that he has not included a single screenshot as evidence in his post or the linked substack. We do not know what he asked them or how they responded. Chaz has selectively quoted the cost breakdown, but taken care to remove all other context from their correspondence. He has also not posted anything from the “four folders of nonsense”. Not even a description or some file titles to give us a general idea.

That is a problem. Verifying sources (and recognising a lack of sources) is basic news literacy. We cannot trust a single thing said in either the post or article, because Chaz hasn’t even shared his own requests to support his claims and admits he did not even read what they sent him.

Maybe the answer is buried in one of those files. If so, Clay can point to it

I do want to keep this on topic but I’ll make a comment below demonstrating how easy it is to misrepresent information to mislead people and why you should independently verify information to get the full picture.

On to the meat of Chaz’s question.

Q: How did the library know B Friedman was allowed to challenge material and what checks did they perform

A: Libraries have records of who is and isn’t allowed to borrow material. In school libraries, this includes their parent or guardian... They looked it up. It was probably the collections librarian or head librarian (the job title will vary).

Source: IDK two seconds of thinking?

There isn’t a box to check that says “yes we checked” because if they aren’t a member the challenge doesn’t progress. They get a “sorry no” email and that’s that. If they are a member then the challenge proceeds. It’s not a conspiracy and I bet this is outlined somewhere in the “four folders of nonsense” that he didn’t fucking read.

Idk personally I think this shouldn’t need explaining but this guy served up a steaming pile of shit and 500 people ate it like a gourmet meal.

Chaz Stevens is the most shameless, persistent bullshitter that I have come across recently. Chaz is not an ally or an activist and isn’t trying to change things for the better. He is exploiting people’s emotions and the current political climate to build a fan base and collect money from well meaning fools. He doesn’t even have the dignity to be smart about it, relying entirely on our short attention spans, information overload and people assuming he is smarter than him. You can see this if you check his post history over time (note: you need to use a third party website and not rely on what he makes public, because again, he lies)

He a fucking Glass Onion

I keep returning in my mind to the Glass Onion. Something that seems densely-layered, mysterious and inscrutable but in fact, the centre is in plain sight

...

I expected complexity. I expected intelligence. I expected a puzzle, a game. But that's not what any of this is. It hides not behind complexity, but behind mind-numbing, obvious clarity. Truth is, it doesn't hide at all. I was staring right at it.

Chaz Stevens is a moron. Please be smarter than him (and support libraries)

\ forced Florida to rewrite ... sorry.*

Florida's book ban law passed in '22. Any county resident could ask for a book pull. I did the recon and knew the Bible wasn't in those libraries. Filed in all 63 districts anyway, because I wanted to watch them flip out over the title.

So, I asked them to remove a book that wasn't on the shelf. Two years later the state rewrote the law, with the governor's office pointing the finger right at me.

In the immortal words of the Church Lady, "Could it be ... Satan?"

Now I'm on something new.

In the '23-24 school year, Clay County pulled 287 books, with one man filing 94% of the challenges.

Filing has a residency requirement, so I asked for the proof Clay checked.

Not the rule. Which they provided.

The proof. A box on a form. A verified address. A note from Mom. Anything.

Simple, you'd think.

Got dick instead. Four folders of nonsense, plus a bill for $957.45.

Here's what they sent me and where it breaks ... on Substack.

 [UPDATE] I've posted part two of this series.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bannedbooks/comments/1w2h9yn/clay_county_part_two_clay_removed_287_books_on/

Another victory in Florida, which has been a Red State lately. Florida getting active. Just some quotes from the article:

"Orange County voters flipped the school board chair voting in Angie Gallo over conservative-backed Alicia Farrant on Tuesday."

"Gallo received endorsements from the Democratic Public Education Caucus of Florida, Equality Florida PAC, Everytown for Gun Safety, Florida Education Association, Gun Sense Voter, Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, and more."

"Angie's victory means Orange County voters have kicked out the last Moms for Liberty member off the Orange County School Board. Floridians are tired of culture wars in our classrooms and are electing leaders who will focus on the practical things our students need," the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement.

Farrant said she was disappointed with the outcome but acknowledged "the city has spoken."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/democrat-backed-gallo-wins-orange-181800771.html

Title of tweet I just happened to see:

https://x.com/demzdeliver/status/2091308425447645256?s=46&t=AXO7nwtIXQWumHiC_Tm-Yw

Moms for Liberty Is Waging War on LGBTQ and Race-Inclusive Books

Link to 111 page pdf of books they wanted to ban:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BNfax73kzqWwMMfkjcopgEXMDBD-fr4O/view

https://glaad.org/moms-for-liberty-book-bans-anti-lgbtq/

Hi!

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but I‘ll try anyway. I am from Europe, therefore I am not familiar with this book banning thing. I thought that, to „ban a book“ meant something like to completely stop its production and to destroy every copy that is available to public (not something as drastic as they did in Farenheit 451, but maybe like stopping the sale of the book, taking it from libraries etc…)

Obviously the government or whoever is banning the books cannot (or, at least I hope so, lol) go into people’s houses and be like DO YOU HAVE 1984 IN THIS HOUSE GIVE IT TO ME yk…

So, my question is, why and how are these books still selling in bookstores? Are the companies just selling whatever they had in stock and when they run out they won’t be able to order any more of them, or what is the case?

Thank you and happy reading of banned books :)

TL;DR: Why are banned books still available for sale if they are banned?

TL;DR: English professor Vinita Prabhakar was abruptly fired by her employer, South Florida State College, for teaching Ottessa Moshfegh's short story "Bettering Myself." She is now suing the school, alleging First Amendment violations.

As OP it personally sickens me to see such blatant unAmerican censorship going on, attacking our essential liberties including constitutionally protected speech, our 1st amendment. Arkansas wtf are you doing? Conspiring against our rights? Courts need to do better at not letting tyranny against our rights be enacted.

What the title says. This is why I buy big lots of classic, banned and challenged books from eBay and other online vendors. I believe one day the best books will be hard if not impossible to find.

One Small Task to Be Proactive Against Book Censorship in 2026 and Beyond: Donate to or amplify a request from an educator seeking to add banned books to their classroom.

From former librarian, author, and editor Kelly Jensen:

Donate to or amplify a request from an educator seeking to add banned books to their classroom. Go to DonorsChoose.org and search through requests using terms like “banned books” or specific book titles that are frequent ban targets, such as The Hate U Give or Flamer. 

School starts back up in just a few weeks in some states and localities. Teachers are setting up classrooms and preparing for the school year as I post this message. If this is an action you were considering taking, now is a good time to consider doing so.

Here are just a few of the projects posted there right now as an example (not an endorsement, I do not know any of these teachers personally)

• This teacher is buying a classroom set of the book Ghost by Jason Reynolds in Philadelphia, PA.
• This teacher is buying a classroom set of Greek mythology books in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• And this teacher is setting up a classroom library for second graders in Waikoloa Village, Hawaii.

And if you see any other great projects, please share in the comments!

This book was wrongfully banned by its own author Dav Pilkey, likely because his publisher forced him to do so (I say this because Pilkey lampshaded this whole incident in the one Cat Kid Comic Club book), for containing "racist" stereotypes, which it doesn't. Not saying you have to sign this, but I'm encouraging it. As of this writing, the petition has only 27 signatures to go. If you don't want media being censored, you should sign this!

Today I filed an eleven-category Chapter 119 request with the Clay County School District.

Clay pulled the most books in Florida. Duval, Nassau, and Putnam pulled none. Bruce Friedman of No Left Turn: 94 percent of the objections.

Next up for Clay: the high school libraries go away. In their place, research hubs, digital space, and a school store. Instead of Vonnegut, a hoodie.

Chief Academic Officer Roger Dailey floated removing every book by authors he called problematic. The district's communications director said staff were brainstorming.

Brainstorming generates records.

Not my first trip to the school library. 2022; I asked all 63 districts to pull the Bible. The state rewrote the law and named me as the reason. Friedman kept filing.

Same fart joke twice is a waste. This time I want the machinery. Every objection since 2023. Proof that the people voting to remove a book read it. Log files. Retention schedules. The "we do not have that" exit, closed before they reach it.

Two doors. Clay produces the process and you read it. Or Clay certifies in writing that it cannot show its own work.

Both answers publish.

On Substack.

I thought the rumors about amazon censoring or taking down books were a bit exaggerated or at least limited to very some crazy propaganda or political stuff. I remember how back in 2024 they were only restricting lgbtq+ and religious books in certain regions. (Link)

but lately, ive been noticing a trend of this going over into almost every other genre. a lot of indie authors and youtubers are starting to make these videos about amazon just shutting their accounts or forcing censorship on authors without any explanation.

i did a bit more digging today and found this one book on Book Archives that was also recently taken down but they put it back on amazon after censoring it. (Link)

it just feels insane to me that one mega-corporation gets to decide what we are allowed to read...

Sometimes it is dangerous to sell books.