Banning Books

Ellen Quinn Sullivan will serve a two-year term on the city’s library board, an advisory group that provides leadership for the library system and its three locations.

More than 10,000 books are banned inside Texas prisons.

Texas Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, made the request to Attorney General Ken Paxton after the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of H.B. 900, which would require booksellers to rate books sold to schools.

House Bill 900 requires books sold in the state be rated for sexual content by the book seller, similar to how Hollywood rates movies.

It’s been two years since Texas implemented new health education standards for students, but advocates say the opt-in instruction still isn’t comprehensive.

A teacher at a public school near Houston has a secret classroom bookshelf largely made up of challenged titles. Many of the books deal with race, sex and gender.

Parents from Katy, Austin and Keller recently launched the Texas Freedom to Read Project. All were angry over growing book bans they say infringe on free speech and access to ideas.

House Bill 900 seeks to rid school libraries of inappropriate books by requiring book vendors to rate materials. A legal challenge says the law is too vague and broad.

Scholastic created a separate fair category for diverse books, which it says is to help schools navigate the complexities of book bans. Librarians accused the company of caving to censorship.

Prison book programs have been sending free books to Texas prisons for years, but recently, they've been told they're no longer allowed to under a Texas Department of Criminal Justice policy they say they've never heard of before.

Fort Worth ISD has no tentative date for returning pulled books to its district libraries.