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Took me 3 months to get 'The Bluest Eye' through our local library board | Banned Book Breakdown - Free To Speak

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Took me 3 months to get 'The Bluest Eye' through our local library board

I sit on our small town library board here in Centerville, and I spent a whole winter trying to get Toni Morrison's book back on the shelves after someone challenged it. People kept saying it was too graphic for teens, but I had to dig up 12 pages of reviews and educational use cases to prove its value. We finally voted 4-3 to keep it, but it took way longer than I thought it would. Has anyone else had a book challenge process drag on for months?

2 comments

2 Comments

drewr151mo ago

The trick that actually got our board to move was bringing in a local high school English teacher to talk about how they teach it in AP Lit. She broke down exactly why the tough parts matter for the themes Morrison was going for. Also printed out the ALA's list of challenged classics to show them they weren't alone in this debate. Once they saw real educators backing it up, the holdouts softened way faster than when I just threw book reviews at them.

valc911mo ago

Oh man, @drewr15 that is such a solid move and I'm honestly kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner. Bringing in an actual teacher who's already navigating this stuff with kids is like having a cheat code for school board meetings. They can't argue with someone who's literally in the classroom making these texts click for students, you know? The ALA list is a good backup too because it shows them this isn't some fringe opinion, it's like a national standard for what kids should be reading. I tried the review dump approach myself once and it just made everyone dig in harder, like they felt attacked or something. Getting a real person with credibility in front of them changes the whole vibe from a fight to a conversation. Definitely stealing this for next time our curriculum review comes up.