Unite Against Book Bans Announces a Free Book Résumé Resource

Yesterday, Unite Against Book Bans announced a new program to help libraries and library supporters to fight censorship. From the press release:

Community advocates, parents, teachers, librarians, and more to have access to free materials to support frequently challenged books

CHICAGO — Unite Against Book Bans, in collaboration with the publishing community, unveils a free collection of book résumés at bookresumes.uniteagainstbookbans.org to support librarians, educators, parents, students, and other community advocates in their efforts to keep frequently challenged books on shelves.

Created in partnership with dozens of publishers and with information provided by publishers, librarians, and School Library Journal, Unite Against Book Bans book résumés are easy-to-print documents designed to help support readers’ access to books that are targeted by censors. Each book résumé summarizes the book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades, and more. Where possible, the book résumés also include information about how a title has been successfully retained in school districts and libraries after a demand to censor the book. These documents are in a PDF format that can be downloaded and printed for easy sharing with administrators, book review committees, and the public at board meetings.

“Unite Against Book Bans partners recognized a need for easy-to-access free resources for the many librarians, educators, and community advocates, who are working so hard to ensure that readers can always access an inclusive, diverse collection of books,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, American Library Association (ALA) Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The work they’re doing — defending the freedom to read — is difficult and hard, and we want to make the task of gathering the information needed to do that easier. We want to thank the publishers, library workers, and volunteers whose investment of time and talent made the creation of this important resource possible.”

Unite Against Book Bans and the publishing community will make hundreds of book résumés available upon launch on Tuesday, February 20, with more to follow in time for National Library Week (April 7–13, 2024). Unite Against Book Bans will continue to work with its publishing partners to regularly expand and update the collection. The ALA documented an unprecedented number of attempts to censor library materials and services in both 2021 and 2022. Censors targeted a staggering 2,571 unique titles in 2022, a 38 percent increase from the previous record of 1,858 set in 2021. Data for 2023 will be released during National Library Week, and it is anticipated that there will be another significant increase in the number of titles targeted for censorship.

About Unite Against Book Bans

Unite Against Book Bans is a national initiative launched by the ALA in April 2022 to empower readers everywhere to stand together in the fight against censorship. With more than two hundred partner organizations and tens of thousands of individual supporters, the campaign connects, equips and mobilizes the public to advocate in their communities for the right to read and to defeat attempts at every level of government to censor reading material. Learn more and join the campaign at uniteagainstbookbans.org/take-action/.

Click here for the site.

Here is the direct link to the book resumé for All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson.

Please share this resource with your staff, trustees, and patrons. It is a great way for anyone to help the library stop book bans, anywhere. Please consider this shorter, sound-bite explanation when sharing this resource on your social media and websites:

When a book or materials are challenged, the library staff, teacher, trustees, or members of a review board need to learn information about the title as part of their informed decision to retain or remove it from a specific collection. Thanks to this project that was announced today, people can look up a title, and then download, read, and print a page sharing the pertinent information about the book.  We will constantly be adding titles.   Each book resumé summarizes the book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades, audience it was written for, and more.

I encourage all of you to promote this far and wide because you don't know when and where it will help someone stop a book from being removed from a library.