Literature

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a list of actions it will take to better protect LGBTQ+ Americans. Among them was a plan to address the rise in books bans, which disproportionately target queer and BIPOC- centered books. An anti-book ban coordinator will be appointed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on the

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled Moms for Liberty a hate group. In their latest Year in Hate & Extremism report, the nonprofit civil rights advocacy group described Moms for Liberty as “one of the most recognized names in the anti-student inclusion movement.” The report also mentions the group’s willingness to “fight tooth and

Last year, I wrote about the conservative group CatholicVote organizing what they called “Hide the Pride,” which encourages people to check out all children’s and teen LGBTQ books in the library, especially on Pride displays, in order to make sure no one else can access them. They’ve now announced the second annual “Hide the Pride”

We’re almost halfway through 2023, which means booksellers, reviewers, and book lovers of all kinds are taking a moment to celebrate some of the amazing titles released so far this year. Every summer, bookselling titan Barnes & Noble joins the fun by releasing their “Best Books of the Year (So Far)” list. Last year’s list

I don’t know about you, but in the last few years, my attention span has shrunken to an abysmal size. Or as author Ann Patchett put it: my “attention span has shrunken like a sweater accidentally thrown in the dryer.” I went from being able to read a hundred pages in one sitting to reading

This week, book banners showed up to the Douglas County Public Library board meeting in Colorado to protest books in the system’s collection. It is not the first time they’ve done it, and it’s also not the first time counter protestors have shown up to push back. None of this is news nor is it

This week, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón in conjunction with the Library of Congress announced that NASA’s Europa Clipper will be launching on its mission in October 2024 with “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The poem, written by Limón, will travel 1.8 billion miles through the galaxy. It will be engraved on

For some people, the childhood memory of book fairs coming to their school is a fond one, full of precious anticipation and exciting purchases. For others, it’s bittersweet — there was the joy of looking through bright and shiny new books, but there was also that constant, nagging knowledge of not being able to afford

A children’s book titled The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, written by Langston Hughes and illustrated by Elmer W. Brown, has resurfaced in Cleveland, OH and is being given a platform it never had. Hughes and Brown met in the ’30s in Cleveland’s Karma House, the oldest Black theater in the United States. Once their

Crossword puzzle fans and passionate readers are a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap. But even the most seasoned Saturday New York Times crossword connoisseur will bump into clues they’re unfamiliar with. So what should you study if you want to be the best of the best? Crossword Solver analyzed 6.3 million newspaper crossword

You might be in a YA low fantasy book if you turn the corner to get to your locker and come upon a daemon. They contain everything odd about high school and literalize it with fantasy. Here is a must-read list of YA low fantasy books for genre lovers and novices alike. Fantasy has a

Whether we’re consciously aware of it, most of us have some sort of bookish goals and/or habit. These can range from wanting to read more, to read more diversely, or finally start trying to make a dent in an established TBR pile. Whatever the goals are, they’re there. I know I’ve mentioned some of mine

I’m a fierce defender of the idea that books don’t have to be hard to be good. I understand writers might prefer to take a deep literary approach when working on their manuscripts, but being hard to read doesn’t always reflect a more meaningful work of literature or worthy read. In certain circumstances, especially in

Anti-censorship advocates and activists have shouted from the rooftops that it is essential to vote. That it is essential to show up to school and library board meetings and speak up about/write those who sit on those boards against book bans and censorship. Advocates and activists have been on the front lines in their respective

The Washington Post released their analysis of book challenges they had obtained from PEN America researcher Tasslyn Magnusson. These 1,065 challenges, which were filed during the 2021-2022 school year, extended over 153 school districts and 37 states, and totaled 2,506 pages. They also tended to target books with similar content, specifically LGBTQ+ topics. While a

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World (12 hours) begins with a perilous escape attempt from Auschwitz and expands into a larger story about Rudolf Vrba, one of the first Jewish people to escape from the notorious concentration camp.  British author Jonathan Freedland (known for both his thrillers

For My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings (7 hours), actor Zosia Mamet (“Girls,” “The Flight Attendant”) has gathered a who’s-who of creative folks, including fellow actors like Busy Philipps, musicians like Patti Smith, writers like David Sedaris and chefs like Kwame Onwuachi. Each contributed an essay about food or a food-related memory,

There’s wit, honesty and insight in Madly, Deeply (19.5 hours), a collection of Alan Rickman’s succinct yet keenly observant diary entries spanning 1993 to 2015. The late actor’s journals reveal a palpable lack of pretentiousness and a go-with-the-flow attitude (even after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer), as well as a compelling contrast between his two

A K-8 school in Florida has banned Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” for its elementary students. In March, the Miami Lakes school received a complaint from a parent of children at the school, Daily Salinas, about the poem as well as four other books. In the complaint, which Gorman tweeted below, Salinas