People who are banning books have been developing a range of tools to do their work over the last five years. These include review and ratings websites where a volunteer or two read a book, write up a report, and then anyone can use those reports–quotes cherrypicked, interpretation aligned with narrow worldviews, and often, numeric or letter grade ratings that they’ve made up to create meaning–to start the challenge process. This is what Moms for Liberty did with their now-defunct BookLooks; it’s what the groups behind RatedBooks do, which subsumed BookLooks’ reviews upon its closure. It’s lazy and disingenuous, and it’s exactly the kind of plagiarism that students in school would be failed for doing. Yet there are plenty of library and school boards, as well as legislators, who think this is good enough to deny young people access to books.
Access is, of course, what libraries do. Access is also key to helping young people develop a reading habit, as research continues to show. Book banners are active participants, if not outright proponents, o...
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