Hello Friends,

This is not our scheduled week for ‘Library and Banned Books News’. It is, however, Banned Books Week, an annual event highlighting the freedom to read. In the U.S., it’s promoted by the American Library Association. (Is there a Banned Books Read-in near you this week? Check the map.) I know that Amnesty International also promotes it elsewhere. If you are outside the U.S., is it a thing where you are?

I’m not going to give the run down of state library news and book challenges now since that’s scheduled for next week, but I want us to take a fun quiz, look at some good news concerning libraries and bans, and then discuss the most banned book of 2025, Sold by Patricia McCormack. (Careless People by Sarah Wynn- Williams has to wait until next time.) And then I’d like to follow up on how my own novel, Keep Sweet is connected to Sold’s theme as well as to the rise of patriarchy in the U.S.

While it’s Not Good News, it’s a Fun Quiz

PEN America posted an Instagram carousel on Jeopardy’s recent “Restricted Reading in America” category, and we’ll see here how many we can name. If you are an Instagram user, you can use the link and then follow PEN there. Since I’ve read many YA books and follow book bans, this quiz was pretty low-hanging fruit for me. I’ll add the answers in a footnote.

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The U.S. Legislative Bills to Ban Books Nationwide are Probably Going to Fizzle Out

Could Congress Create a National Book Ban? From School Library Journal

Misleading titles H.R. 7661: Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, H.R. 2616: Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act, and H.R. 8705: CHARLIE Act.

The good news is noted at the end of the article:

While all three measures represent a concerted effort by House Republicans to codify conservative federal restrictions on K–12 education, none has an easy path to becoming law.

With the 2026 midterm elections approaching and most Senate legislation requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, the proposals face significant hurdles before they could become national policy.

Librarians are Getting the Opportunity to Tell Their Own Stories in Print and on Film

LIBRARIANS on LIBRARIES from the New York Times (gift article)

We asked dozens of librarians about America’s libraries — what they provide, what they need to survive.

These librarians want you to know that they don’t sit around reading all day. They want you to know about book bans and budget cuts, but also about career counseling and crafting groups and pop-up medical clinics.

They want you to worry, the way they worry, about artificial intelligence, looming legislation and harassment of their staff. But most of all, they want you to know what the library really is: a safe place for people to gather around books, ideas and one another.

Librarians Hit the Road from I Love Libraries

Roadtrip Nation, the PBS documentary series that sends three people across the United States in an RV to explore what it means to build a career—and more importantly, a life—around the things you love, has dropped its new season, and libraries are at the forefront for a portion.

In the two-episode arc, “Beyond Books,” three aspiring librarians take a road trip to explore all the surprising, powerful, and essential roles libraries play in our communities today—online, in rural areas, and more. Along the way, they learn from community leaders and caretakers of knowledge just how vibrant and dynamic a career in libraries can be and discover the unique impact they each can bring when it comes to creating a space that’s truly for everyone. …

“There’s a public misconception that librarians are gatekeepers of information because, historically, stacks had been closed and that’s how it was,“ Sam said. “But libraries haven’t been that way for many years now. In reality, we’re thought partners, we’re friends, and we’re in this together. Librarians are here to help the public wayfind, not to hold information back. That’s the message we’re still working to establish culturally.”

And: I enjoyed this post on Banned Books Week by Julie Snider.

Sold by patricia mccormick

As I was a high school librarian for many years, I read a lot of young adult (YA) fiction so that I could ‘book talk’ it to students and classes who were coming in to check out books. It’s strange that Patricia McCormack’s Sold was the top banned book in 2025 because it was published in 2006. Nearly twenty years of helping and not hurting. (Huh. What could this really be about?) In a previous post, I discussed the novel in detail: what it’s about, how I came to read it, and why it belongs in the school library:

* Trafficking of girls (and boys) is a topic that seems to interest conservatives, a thing they claim to want to put an end to. (Remember the Pizzagate conspiracy theory?)

* Information is power. The author interviewed trafficked girls and activists fighting for them to present this realistic portrayal.

* Knowledge of these terrible but very real circumstances engenders empathy.

* Empathy may engender action. Many high school students form clubs, get a teacher to be their advisor, bring guest speakers, and raise funds to fight for good in the world.

* High school activism is a foundation for a life of concern and goodwill for humankind. Even if a student doesn’t get to this step, they’ve done the first step: read the book.

This week book critic Ron Charles posted “What’s So Scary about This Book?” In which he includes a bit of chat with McCormick.

Even while reading scores decline and teenagers drift away from books, activists have whipped up a moral panic about pornography in schools.

As McCormick suggests, it’s a movement based on a particularly destructive kind of misreading.

“Books aren’t being banned because of their content or their quality or their message,” she says. “People are taking a single page — and in the case of this book, it’s the page where the main character is sexually assaulted — and reading that out of context in a way that triggers or troubles people.”

“I always say, ‘It’s supposed to be upsetting!’ You can’t write a book about child trafficking without having a scene like that in there. But it’s written from the point of view of a 13-year-old, so her language is not graphic. … and it isn’t pornographic.”

“I can’t tell you how many schools have launched fundraising efforts after having read the book. It activates kids. It turns them into activists. And so we’re shutting off that opportunity.”

Even more important, McCormick says that when she visits high schools to talk about Sold, a student will frequently take her aside or stand up in front of the group and say, “Something like this has happened to me.”

“There’s a way in which reading about a girl in Nepal — like six degrees of separation — allows kids to see their own situation with empathy. And those kids can get help. … And when you think about what’s happening at Cornell right now, this is a book everybody needs to read.”

Yes, I Did My Own Take— Keep Sweet

I had a brief interview with Marla Miller about how I came to write Keep Sweet, the title of which I’d picked before the Netflix series on the FLDS cult and Warren Jeffs. I decided to stick with the title because, at that point, it was a good indicator of what the novel was about. (Please check it out!)

I was told by agents that I needed to make the book less ‘adult’ (the protagonist being sexual abuse victim might be too much) and that I should give her a boyfriend. Ugh. That wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. Luckily, I found a small press publisher. This makes it hard to promote, but it’s an honest book, which matters to me.

Everyone is probably thinking of the Cornell 7 just about now. The similarities are in the privileged men dominating women and girls. But there is also the concern about our government becoming enmeshed with Christian Nationalism. And we can see how mixing up the church and the state harms women. Check this article published only a few weeks ago:

A Gender War Explodes in Utah Over the Courts, Abortion and Representation from the New York Times (gift article)

But Utah is unique; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is patriarchal and dominates state politics. And as Utah’s women have spoken up, its male politicians, including Gov. Spencer Cox, who has made a national reputation on “disagreeing better,” have punished them.

The women so far are unbowed. Emma Petty Addams, the co-executive director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, quoted church doctrine on the proper exercise of power to explain her group’s mission: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

For all the images of tradwives and momfluencers flooding television and social media from Utah, the reality playing out in the Beehive State is something quite different.

Four years ago, Mormon Women sued the Legislature for refusing to enact a law that voters had passed banning gerrymandering. As Salt Lake City grew bigger and bluer, that law was all but certain to yield a Democratic member in the state’s four-person House delegation. The state’s Supreme Court, with its first female majority, consistently and unanimously sided with the women.

Utah’s Republican leaders, who command every statewide office and a supermajority in the Legislature, responded first with threats, and then by remaking the court.

That’s right, they added men and took away the women’s voices. That’s current stuff, friends.

Next, please grab Keep Sweet from your favorite bookseller. That supports me and my work here.

Please like and comment! Thanks for being here! Happy banned books reading!

P.S. In our very long discussion comments section about Theo of Golden and how much I disliked it, a few people wished that I had given more plot/story info on John of John by Douglas Stuart, which I loved. Tema Frank wrote a review of John of John that includes major plot points without giving away too much. Check it out!

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