Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:56, and sunset is 8:03, for 14h 07m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, the United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.
Richelle Wilson reports Wisconsin’s ‘banned book queen’ tracks book challenges and worries about widespread bans (‘Tasslyn Magnusson keeps a public database of book bans around the country and advocates for students, authors and librarians’):
Magnusson worries about increased efforts to ban books from school libraries. Last year, Wisconsin was the second-leading state nationally in the number of school library book removals, according to a new report she and others wrote for PEN America. A big reason for that was one parent in the Elkhorn Area School District who requested a review of 444 books.
Other districts around the state are dealing with debates around book bans, too. Magnusson lives with her family in Prescott, a small town in western Wisconsin where the St. Croix River and the Mississippi River meet. She said local school districts have been feeling the strain of increased book challenges, which often lead to heated discussions at school board meetings.
An aspiring children’s author herself, Magnusson started participating in the “kid lit” community on social media after getting a master’s degree in writing for children and young adults. That’s when she first noticed that some of her own favorite authors, including young-adult fiction writer Laurie Halse Anderson, were having their books taken off shelves.
In 2021, Anderson posted on X that her 1999 novel “Speak” seemed to be getting banned more often. She suggested that someone should start tracking book bans around the country.
Magnusson took note.
“I was like, ‘Wow, Laurie Halse Anderson asked. I can do that. I know how to use a Google spreadsheet,’” Magnusson recalled on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “So, I took it upon myself to make a spreadsheet. And here we are three years later.”
This book-banning panic will subside when it meets opposition; opposition, however, requires awareness of the censors’ and scolds’ work.
See also PEN America, New Report Finds Unprecedented Surge in School Book Bans.