A six-month study carried out by Index of Censorship, shared with The Independent, found that 53% of surveyed school librarians reported that they had received requests asking them to remove books from their shelves. The titles in these requests included many LGBTQ+ work; This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson; Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love; Heartstopper by Alice Oseman; ABC Pride by Louie Stowell, Elly Barnes and Amy Phelps. and many others.
More than half of the requests made came from parents, and of those requests, 56% of libraries did remove the book or books in question. Dawson’s is now the third most censored young people’s author in the USA, and it is thought that this new wave of censorship in the UK may be influenced by the UK.
Alison Tarrant, chief executive of the School Library Association (SLA), which helped administer the survey along with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, said that there appears to be something of a “trend” of censorship targeted at books written by LGBTQ+ authors or featuring LGBTQ+ characters.
“We’ve seen a couple of cases where things have been stirred up or initiated by groups or people in America – it’s no one actually in the school community itself,” said Tarrant.
“I doubt this is a new phenomenon. And it’s probably been going on for as long as school libraries have existed. I wonder whether it’s a symptom of the more polarised society that we’re living in now, and that’s why things have got stronger.”
In America, the ALA (American Library Association) collects data on books being targeted, and their latest report shows that requests for bans of unique titles increased 65% in 2023 from the previous year. However, there is no equivalent in the UK so there is no way of tracking any rise in this issue.
A British librarian, who has been given the name Emma to protect her identity, reported that she was asked to remove every book with LGBTQ+ themes from her school library in 2023, but was given very little information about why the purge of this content was suddenly needed. She was aware of one parental complaint about a book but added: “I can scarcely believe that because one book was challenged, the whole collection was removed.”
Although most of the books she removed have now been restored to the shelves, some have permanently disappeared. Emma also now feels frightened and intimidated when ordering new books for the library; a juxtaposition to the excitement she had once felt for curating an inclusive and diverse collection of literature.
A spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall said: “It is troubling to see reports that LGBTQ+ books are being removed from school libraries as we know that many students find great importance and reassurance in seeing themselves reflected in books and media.
“Preventing LGBTQ+ young people from seeing themselves represented in inclusive resources and books at school can often make them feel ashamed and feel the need to hide who they are.”
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