School libraries, in general, have a number of restrictions placed upon them with regard to the books they choose to stock for their library. It can depend on the values that the school wants to uphold, behaviours represented in books that are deemed inappropriate within the school and also the values of the school community as a whole, and this will include parents. Some may say this is censorship, but I don’t agree. That’s like saying it’s censorship if you don’t allow profanity in the school yard. There will always be limits to what school libraries have in their collections, and these limits will vary from school to school, and that’s just the way it is.
Here is where someone may argue that not having certain books in the school library may turn kids off reading. Yes this could happen, but this is where our beloved public libraries step in. At a public library the choices are endless and if parents have an issue with suitable content, then this is their chance to be involved in their child’s reading habits and take note of what’s coming home.
Anyway…the link below is for Penguin’s Off The Shelf newsletter, there are a lot of great articles in it, but the one I am talking about is called 'Everybody’s Doing It’ and it looks at the place for ‘explicit content’, more specifically sex, in books for teenagers and school libraries.
Happy Reading.
*I am sorry to say that this link no longer works. Dec 2019*
http://issuu.com/penguinaustralia/docs/off_the_shelf_dec_edv2
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