A Teaching Artist reflects on the political, aesthetic and pedagogical complexities of an 8th grade performance ethnography project about banned books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the librarianship challenges faced by the people of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. It mentions about the defensive librarianship and targeting books by and about people of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. It discusses the need of a robust DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) committee, and a clear, straight-forward book challenge procedure in each library system.

When Green was at school during the 90s, Section 28 ensured there no books in his school library featuring LGBT characters or storylines. It's terrible what fear and ignorance can do to people and that legislation left many of them feeling ashamed and alone. That's why, when he started writing young adult books, he wanted to write the sort of thing he would have loved to have found in the school library when he was a teenager. His debut, Noah Can't Even, was published in 2017 by Scholastic, and since then he published a further ten novels, six of them YA, as well as middle-grade and picture book titles. All of his books have comedy at their heart. Some of them also feature LGBT characters and themes. It's been lovely having them embraced by schools up and down the country, and since 2017 he has been invited into hundreds of schools, giving talks and running workshops, sharing his love of reading, of comedy, and sometimes talking about difficult topics through the accessible lens of shared laughter.

Banned Books Week is a hallmark tradition among US-based librarians and the American Library Association. Yet, the ALA and librarians across the profession are excluding the most significant and egregious violations of intellectual freedom and access to literature and information in our so-called free society – the US prison system. In this essay, the author discusses the significance of carceral book banning and why libraries’ interest divergence from social and prison justice movements are counterproductive and uphold systems of racial injustice.