Mirrors. Windows. Lonely. Alone. Cover the mirror. Your place is clear. Close a window. So much you won’t know. Mirrors. Windows. A child needs both. Rudine Sims Bishop, the mother of multicultural children’s literature was the first to explain that, in order to get a balanced view of the world every child needs mirrors and…
Tag: Banned Books
More Book Bans are Coming
This is the latest article in a series on censorship laws and book bansbeing passed around the country, but particularly in the author’s adopted home-state of Florida. To read previous articles on the same topic:After “Don’t Say Gay” and “Stop Woke”From Pride 2022 to “Don’t Say Gay”“Don’t Say Gay” is Bad, Not Just for LGBTQ…
Banned Books Week 2022
It’s Banned Books Week again. I wish I could just tell a nice story about how valuable some books that might be controversial were to me when I was growing up. Or even a nice piece about how hard it can be to let go when you’re a parent, to trust your kids and give…
Banned Books Redux?
New Book Bannings A couple of months ago, during Banned Books Week, I wrote that banning books is really about protecting fragile adults, not children. Since then, it seems like there’s been an explosion of efforts to restrict access to books, especially books about queer topics. My own school district in Florida has dealt with…
What it Means to Ban a Book
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” The only book my parents ever took away from me was Catcher in the Rye. There are a lot of reasons someone might want to take that book away from a child. But none of those were the reasons my parents confiscated it from me. My…