You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Roundup With Harper Lee’s re-emergence on the literary scene, people are once again talking about her famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Predictably, some of those people think the book, and at least one high school production of […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Well, two steps forward, one step back: in spite of the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, books with LGBT themes and characters are still widely challenged. Here’s an interesting article about ongoing parental challenges and “vigilante censorship” in Vermont schools. It’s not just […]

Sunday Bag o’ Links

This showed up on the io9 website today: I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance, because io9’s choice of a graphic to accompany its story about women dominating the Nebulas is the cover of a Nebula-winning book written by a man, Jeff Vandermeer. Granted, the strongest and most well-drawn characters in Annihilation, as in Authority and Acceptance, the other books […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: Maus

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Mini-Rant From a long editorial titled The Erosion of Free Speech on a conservative think tank’s website, I learn that more than 300 students and professors at Valdosta State University in Georgia signed a petition demanding the withdrawal of the American Library Association’s […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: Persepolis

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Banned Book News I linked to an earlier story on this in a previous YCRT! post, but here’s more on the censorship of an 85-year-old Tintin comic in Canada. After a single parental complaint, a Connecticut school superintendent overruled teachers and […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Poor guy can’t catch a break. Tintin’s in Dutch again, this time in Canada, where, as in the USA and other countries, there’s a misguided push to pull racially-dated books, written during the days when stereotypes were more widely accepted, from library shelves. […]

You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Great news! Instead of trying to preemptively ban controversial material in state schools, Florida instead plans to proactively expose 8th graders to new ideas. Oh, wait…. In previous YCRT! posts I’ve followed the battle between conservative parents and teachers over textbooks and reading assignments in a Dallas, […]

Thursday Bag o’ Links

Many months ago I said I’d monitor news coverage of the trials of the 11 motorcyclists arrested after a videotaped beating of a motorist in New York City. I believed then, and believe now, that the motorist did something to start the fight, but unfortunately whatever happened to set things in motion was not videotaped. I hoped that once the […]