Book banning has been making waves across the United States. Concerned parents and politicians have taken it upon themselves to decide which books are appropriate for students in school to read. Although in essence it seems like a good idea to restrict books to certain age groups, that’s not the case. Books are being banned left and right with little to no reason and it’s peak keeps growing. With the recent trend of banning books, kids will be missing out on learning opportunities.

Most kids learn their vocabulary and grammar from books and dictionaries. This concept has been challenged as a school district in Florida is taking a huge step back by removing dictionaries from their library. Governor Ron DeSantis new law, DeSantis law, was taken into action and removed three publishers of dictionaries who have had them removed from the district due to descriptions of “sexual conduct”. Although not used often these days, dictionaries are still valuable to this day and benefit students in understanding terminology and materials inside the classroom. With this step taken further, concern has risen on what other books could be in danger because of restrictions like these. History textbooks could be in danger, many of them containing heavier sexual topics throughout the pages. Not only would laws like these impact our education system, it has real world consequences too. One of the books that seem to leave the tongues of many is Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison’s, “The Bluest Eye”. A parent from Texas sent a request to their district board to remove the book due to its graphic description of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is a very sensitive topic to discuss, even more write and publish to the world to see and read about. It is because of this very reason that books like these shouldn’t be banned. It introduces and teaches its readers to topics as such and how to identify them. Books like “The Bluest Eye” teach readers to identify behaviors like these and stop them. A 10 year-old from Delaware spoke up about her own experience about sexual abuse she was experiencing due to the book “It’s Perfectly Normal”. Her case was later brought up to court and the offender was convicted. The judge of her case would later come out to say, “There were heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book”. With books like these, we are not only stopping many students from learning, but also for them to speak up about their own experiences and battles.

As presented in the argument above, one of the main reasons why books are banned are because of concerns of parents. Depending on the state, a district may receive over 80 requests to take down numerous books. Most books which include topics like sexual topics and gender are the ones being targeted. One that particularly stood out to me was “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, mainly because I read it not so long ago a few years back. It wasn’t until I began doing research of the amount of drama this book caused for many parents across the US. There were two reasons why parents were storming their local school district to desperately take this book down the shelves, the LGBTQIA+ content and sexually explicit content in the book. The book includes a pretty graphic description of sexual violence which many parents claim shouldn’t be allowed on children’s shelves. I do agree that small children should absolutely not be reading these types of books for it is not for their age group but, I do believe that at least teens should be able to have access to it. Journalists have come out online to comment on how after reading “All Boys Aren’t Blue” they were able to recognize past sexual violent events that happened to them. The amount of people that could get help by learning about events that happened to them would heal many. Although I do get the concern of young children not being allowed to read books like these for including sexual explicit content, I don’t get the LGBTQIA+ excuse. Many books including “George” by Alex Gino are flagged throughout libraries plainly for including transgender topics or characters. I hear many people complain about this book being placed in libraries where young children may be able to get their hands on for its talk about sexual activities.  This type of thinking usually only applies to LGBTQIA+ books. “Icebreaker” by Hannah Grace is a novel that is targeted towards pre-teens while including several heavy sexual scenes between it’s main straight couple. Books like “George” are harshly criticized in huge waves for including such scenes, but others with the same or even heavier scenes aren’t just because it is straight.

Book banning has unarguably been impacting education across the US, threatening school districts and libraries from teaching different aspects of life to others. With this recent trend, topics like race, sex, gender, and many more will become harder to teach to future generations. Concerned parents and politicians truly believe what they are doing is fine and just, but this will just lead to misunderstandings and misinformation regarding these topics. What should have been a good idea now seems to be an ever growing problem. With this rising problem, we can only hope the list doesn’t grow and instead set restrictions on age groups.