Educators, students get creative in evading book bans

Educators and students have been finding creative ways over the past few years to circumvent book bans in states and schools across the country.

Inside and outside the classroom, vested teachers, parents and young readers are forging access to free versions of books that have been taken off the shelves in schools, largely in Republican-led states, after lawmakers found them inappropriate for certain age groups.

Here are some of the ways readers are still managing to find challenged materials:

Banned book clubs and community events 

Book clubs that focus on banned titles have been cropping up around the country in schools, community centers and online through activists organizations.

The Authors Guild hosts a free virtual book club, each month offering a “different work of fiction or nonfiction recently barred in one or more U.S. school districts or states.”

And students have been working on their own to create banned book clubs as an after school activity, with some seeing pushback from their communities.

Christine Emeran, director of the Youth Free Expression Program for the National Coalition Against Censorship, said she has seen libraries, organizations and communities hosting events that give away banned books for free, community discussions on how book bans are happening and people participating in sit-ins at school board meetings and handing out books the board is trying to ban.

Emeran says people overlook “how many students don’t have transportation to be able to go to a public bookstore to purchase a book” and how useful these different tactics can be to giving out the books.

“In terms of access to information that’s not always possible based on your economic background, especially those types of books that are being targeted — they tend to involve vulnerable communities where they might not have a good spot that they use to get the books that they might need as a lifesaver, or kind of way of being able to have cultural representation or even affirmation for their identities,” she said.

Little Free Libraries 

Small “take a book, leave a book” stations are increasingly popular, particularly in highly populated areas.

The boxes are in many cases set up by interested individuals through the Little Free Libraries organization, which has a goal of providing diverse books, especially in high-need areas. The books go in a little box that is set out on the street for anyone to take.  

The organization has previously encouraged participants to fill their Little Free Libraries with books that are getting banned by states.

“Fight #bookbans by starting a #LittleFreeLibrary book-sharing box and filling it with #bannedbooks!” the group said in a tweet last year.

The organization says a majority of those running Little Free Libraries have shared banned books with their communities.

“I am in Philadelphia, and just today I saw a collaboration with Little Free Library where they’re putting 30 Little Free Libraries across the city that are celebrating banned books, particularly books that have been banned by Black authors or have Black characters,” said Kasey Meehan, director of the Freedom to Read project. 

Online access through public libraries 

The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) in 2022 launched a program entitled Books UnBanned that allows teenagers to apply to get a free online library card no matter where they live so they can access books that may be banned in their schools.

The eCard was only supposed to run for one year, but the BPL said it saw so much interest that it kept the program going.

“We started this program, and we said if you’re interested in access to our digital collections, send us an email. And we got an unbelievable response and very poignant notes about what [students] were missing and how they were isolated because they couldn’t read the stories that reflected the individuals that they were becoming, and that they were sort of limited in terms of their world perspective.” said Linda Johnson, BPL president and CEO.

Not only is the program still running, but the BPL has partnered with other libraries from various states to expand the number of individuals who can access free online collections.

“We started on this alone, and then in the last few months, we’ve added some partners to the program. So now I think L.A. County, Seattle, they’re joining us, and so hopefully it will take some of the pressure off of our program,” Johnson said.

“We have lent out I think over 300,000 books to over 7,500 users, and it continues to grow, so the more libraries that join us under that books on bans umbrella, the better,” she added.  

Secret bookshelves

A Texas teacher told NPR last month she started a secret bookshelf in her classroom in 2021 that allows students to read books after her state banned titles lawmakers deemed “sexually explicit, pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable books in public schools.” 

“It does make me nervous,” the teacher told the outlet. “I mean, this is absolutely silly that I am not free to talk about books without giving my name and worrying about repercussions.” 

From July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America, a free speech organization, estimated there were almost 6,000 instances of banned books in the U.S., noting it believes the number could be much higher.

“The unprecedented number of book bans that we’ve observed for the last two years continues at the same volume and pace. And we don’t anticipate that that will change very much in the coming year,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.  

“However, we are seeing some glimmers of hope. For example, we have noticed that individuals who are committed to preserving everybody’s freedom to read and learn are being elected to school boards and library boards in some communities. There’s an increasing effort by some legislators to protect our First Amendment right to read and access libraries,” she added.