On Book Banning - by Ira Wells

Whenever I talk about book banning I make clear that the current crisis is driven by the religious right who are requesting the removal of thousands of books from schools and libraries (and have lately taken to targeting booksellers as well). I also make clear that they are not the only ones who are looking to censor what we can read. Book challenges come from both the left and the right, feminists and misogynists, people of a variety of religious backgrounds, politicians, and even from librarians. Ira Wells recognizes this and does not shy away from discussing this full range of restrictions and its consequences.

Wells begins by describing a "library audit" conducted at his children's (Ontario, Canada) elementary school. 

...the principal...told a group of parents...that she wished she could get rid of "all the old books". The bulk of the library's holdings were, from her perspective, to Eurocentric, too male, too heteronormative.

By "old books" the principal meant any book over 15 years old, regardless of its other qualities. This would necessarily include a lot of children's classic works, as well as plenty of works by LGBTQ authors and BIPOC authors.

He makes fair comparison between the Mom's for Liberty crowd in Florida and the Ontario progressives each with their own agenda for "child safety". Each group has identified categories of books that they believe should go. While the religious right wants all books with LGBTQ themes removed, the Canadian progressives would like to see books that are not "woke" enough removed.

Greater sensitivity to racially charged language and imagery has resulted in school library challenges to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, and several titles by Dr. Seuss. After some school districts banned from classrooms all books by non-Black authors that contain the N-word, novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird went from being mandatory to unteachable.

Predictably both groups of would be banners identify the works they'd like removed as "potential sources of student 'harm'". 

Also, predictably, the principal of Wells' children's school insisted that she was not banning any books, but rather simply "weeding" the collection.

...but this is a misrepresentation of library protocol: As the American Library Association states, "While weeding is essential to the collection development process, it should not be used as a deselection tool for controversial materials."  

Wells work also explores the history of book banning through a lens of religion as well as the history of libraries and the freedom of speech, current trends in monitoring speech including "soft censorship" which happens when titles are excluded from publication or purchase in order to avoid challenges.