Illinois Passes a Law Prohibiting the Banning of Books by Daniel Lee

Illinois Passes a Ban on Book Bans - The New York Times

    Recently, the topic of book bans has been on the rapid rise. Books have been banned mostly due to parents wanting to protect their children from LGBTQ+ themes, political ideologies, sexually explicit scenes, and many more reasons. In 2022, the number of book bans has doubled compared to the previous year. Many communities and organizations are working to prevent the banning of books. One notable organization is the American Library Association. To fight this rapidly rising conflict, Illinois has passed a law that bans the banning of book bans. The law was signed on June 12, 2023. However, this law will not take place until January 1, 2024.

    This recently passed law requires that public libraries must adopt the ALA's Library Bill of Rights, or they must make their own statement that prohibits book banning. The ALA's Library Bill of Rights states that "materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation." Public libraries that don't abide may lose state funding.

    J.B. Pritzker, governor of Illinois, has lots to say on the topic of book banning. He said that "Book bans are about censorship, marginalizing people, marginalizing ideas and facts. Regimes banned books, not democracies." During the Bill Signing Ceremony in Chicago, Governor J.B. Pritzker also said that "Here in Illinois, we don't hide from the truth. We embrace it. All of it."

    I personally think that the banning of book bans is great step for Illinois. However, I believe that when we have a greater selection to read from, we need to have more categorization of books. Just like movies have PG, PG-13, and R to recommend which age group is "allowed" to watch these movies, we should have something similar, but for books. In this way, parents that want to protect their children can have a better idea of which books they should and should not allow their children to read. This way, we can keep all books in public libraries without having books being banned. What do you think? Do you think this bill will have a positive or negative result?

Comments

  1. Y_Jemina_FSeptember 17, 2023 at 7:07 PM

    I think your suggestion is amazing, I'm surprised it didn't come up during research for the Banned Book project last year! I wasn't scrolling through these blogs expecting information on news, but I'm pleasantly surprised, and I appreciate the effort to find quotes as well. Great blog, it reads like a news article (I mean that in the best way), it's very articulate and if not for you, I wouldn't have gotten this update.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnthonyOctober 2, 2023 at 11:32 AM

    Hi Daniel, very cool analysis of this law. I like your idea about 'categorizing' books based on their controversy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shlok C.October 3, 2023 at 6:04 PM

    Hey Daniel, I agree with your opinion about ranking the books on some sort of scale. Although this bill that makes libraries abide by the ALA Library Bill of Rights might seem good and won't do too much now, I think that this could definitely become a problem. Also, in the Champaign Public Library, they sort of have sections separated by age groups to try and do this, but the ranking would also help all of the other libraries who don't have this kind of system already. This was a really interesting blog. Nice job!

    ReplyDelete
  4. SophiaOctober 12, 2023 at 7:25 PM

    Hi Daniel! This is a very interesting post, and a big topic in many different areas, so I think it's great that you decided to talk about it. I agree that books should be classified by appropriate age groups, but I personally don't think they should be strictly "restricted," like movies are. Like Shlok said, I like the Champaign Public Library's system of different sections for different age groups -- children on the first floor and adults on the second, with completely separate sections for movies, teen books and nonfiction. This way, if a kid is just a little more advanced at reading or emotionally ready for more mature books, they can find it and have access to it, but they won't stumble on it on accident, thinking it's a kid's book.

    ReplyDelete

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