Book bannings on the rise in US schools, says anti-censorship group
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The Kids' Right to Read Project (KRRP) is part of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and says in November alone they dealt with three times the average number of incidents. To date in 2013, KRRP investigated 49 book bannings or removals from shelves in 29 states, a 53% increase in activity from last year. In the last half of the year the project challenged 31 incidents compared to 14 in the same period last year.
Acacia O'Connor of the KRRP said, "Whether or not patterns like this are the result of co-ordination between would-be censors across the country is impossible to say. But there are moments, when a half-dozen or so challenges regarding race or LGBT content hit within a couple weeks, where you just have to ask 'what is going on out there?'"
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Among the other successes the KRRP counts was the situation involving the urban fantasy novel Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, which was removed from the shelves at schools in Alamogordo, New Mexico, following a single complaint by a parent. The school board later reinstated the book.
Neil Gaiman said today: "I'm just glad that organisations like the Kids' Right to Read Project exist, and that so many of these challenges have successful outcomes – it's obvious that without them, the people who do not want their children, or other people's, exposed to ideas, would be much more successful at making books vanish from the shelves."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/23/book-bannings-rise-us-censorship