You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review Lookback: James and the Giant Peach

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCTR! News From a “love letter” to librarians: I imagine librarians are also working on their Banned Books displays now. Banned Books Week is set for Sept. 24-30, celebrating our freedom to read and to seek and express ideas. My […]

Recharging My Battery

A good motorcycle ride will do that every time. Here’s a four-minute GoPro video I put together yesterday after a ride to Arivaca, one of the oldest settlements in southern Arizona. The town is located just 11 miles north of the Mexican border, dead center in one of the Southwest’s busiest drug smuggling and migrant […]

London Bridge: Still Standing

So much for the Mayan Calendar. Here’s the bridge, apparently not in any danger of falling down, in Lake Havasu, Arizona: Last week my riding buddy Ed suggested a two-day round robin to Lake Havasu, and having nothing better to do I said “two’s in.” We left on Wednesday, rode about 330 miles to northwestern […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. Arizona Hyperbolic but worth the read: an essay titled What Do Apartheid South Africa and Tucson, Arizona Have in Common? Elsewhere Are Republicans more likely than Democrats to be in favor of banning books that teach “dangerous ideas”?  It would seem […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Wars

Arizona: Tucson Unified School District is still in damage control mode, denying that it banned any books.  But the story’s out of the box … unlike the books TUSD rounded up and put in boxes labeled “banned books.” Banned books, cancelled classes, fired teachers — when anti-intellectuals who hold learning and scholarship in contempt take […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. Arizona: That rumor I mentioned in my last YCRT! column?  The one about the racists going after ethnic studies at the universities, now that they’ve “fixed” the high schools?  Looks like there’s some truth behind it. Here’s another disturbingly Orwellian […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. Arizona: When I began following the Tucson Unified School District book banning story, I found one of the most interesting sources of behind-the-scenes reporting, both within TUSD classrooms and on its governing board, to be David Morales’ Three Sonorans Blog, […]