By Pat R. Scales
4 stars
A helpful reference resource for studying and discussing specific books and their challenges.
The book covers a variety of children’s literature, from picture books to YA. Each entry contains a short summary with a few quotes from reviews, an overview of challenges against the book, a list of its awards and accolades, and further reading about the author, the book, and its censorship, as well as related videos. There are also a list of discussion questions and two books challenged for similar issues.
While not exactly the most thrilling book to read through completely, it works well as a reference book to pick and choose relevant sections. The discussion questions, video links, and further reading sections make this an especially great resource for discussing literature and censorship with children. Perfect for putting together lesson plans and organizing discussions.
The formatting works well for discussing censorship with young readers and getting them to think critically. I do think some of the questions felt a bit leading toward a certain outcome, but overall they provide a great starting place for talking about reasons for challenges, justifying the freedom to read, and thinking critically about books.
I found the book helpful because there are so many challenged and banned books that I can’t possibly read them all. It was nice to have an overview on a selection of books to understand the challenges and pick the ones I was most interested in to read.
The backmatter also contains young-reader-friendly resources about the First Amendment, professional resources on book censorship, the Top 100 Most Banned of Challenged Books List 2010-2019, a list of children’s classics and why they were challenges (some of which are absolutely hilarious), and award winning books and why they were challenged.
A helpful reference resource for teaching children about the First Amendment, book censorship, and the freedom to read.