With book banning increasing around America, this book breaks down how and why contemporary reading practices can lead to censorship. Requests for the redaction, removal, relocation, and restriction of books—also known as challenges—have markedly increased in the 2020s. Book Banning in 21st-Century American Libraries, based on 25 contemporary book challenge cases in schools and public libraries across the United States argues that understanding contemporary reading practices, especially interpretive strategies, is vital to understanding why people attempt to censor books in public institutions. The books focuses on the why of censorship and posits that many censorship behaviors and practices, such as challenging books and targeting public libraries and schools, are intimately tied to the how one understands the practice of reading and its effects on character development and behavior. It discusses reading as a social practice that has changed over time and encompasses different physical modalities and interpretive strategies. In order to understand why people challenge books, it presents a model of how the practice of reading is understood by challengers including “what it means” to read a text, and especially how one constructs the idea of “appropriate” reading materials.
