Earlier on in this year, books have been banned from schools in the United States for various reasons. Some reasons deal with the physical appearance and preferences of the authors or protagonists. Other reasons have to do with the themes or language in the books.

“Maus [Art Spiegelman] is a graphic novel about the Holocaust,” Smoky Hill Librarian Radosevich. “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; The Color Purple by Alice Walker.”

Other books include the authors or protagonist in the book being from the LGBTQ community.

“All Boys Aren’t Blue is a memoir from a gay man; Cemetery Boys [by Aiden Thomas] is about a trans person,” Radosevich said. “More Happy Than Not is Adam Silveira’s newest book and he is also LGBTQ writer.”

Books are also being banned from authors who are people of color.

“Old classics from black authors like the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.” Radosevich said.

The action of banning the books has brought mixed emotions from Librarian Radosevich.

“I kind of love that they got on the list because I feel that it makes people want to read them more,” Radosevich said. “It also makes me really sad because I feel like if you can’t read about something that’s outside of your reality, or makes you uncomfortable, if you can’t even read about it and think about it, then that’s a really scary commentary for where our society is.”