Pushing Back Against Those Who Ban or Burn Children’s Books

This Guidebook Can Help You Defend Works That Get Attacked by Opponents of the First Amendment

Books Under Fire: A Hit List of Banned and Challenged Children’s Books is a guidebook that can help you make informed decisions when trying to safeguard children’s books from current opponents of America’s First Amendment. A variety of politically motivated and religion-driven censorship groups and individuals want to throw dark cloaks over the ragged but true realities of American history, race relations, politics, and cultural biases. Ill-informed and overly biased book censors and book burners also want to hide sex and sexual diversity from young people who are attempting to figure out who they are and how they fit into the world.

Written by Pat R. Scales and published by the American Library Association (ALA), Books Under Fire is written for teachers, librarians, principals, parents, and others who are concerned about efforts to block children’s books deemed “controversial” or “obscene” by particular groups or individuals.

The author of Books Under Fire is a First Amendment advocate and former chair of the ALA’s Intellectual Committee. She also serves on the National Coalition Against Citizenship’s board of advisors. Along with numerous other credentials, she is the author of two additional works related to children’s books.

The work is structured efficiently and effectively for those who (1) want to understand why a particular book has been deemed controversial and (2) defend it knowledgeably. Thirty-four books are examined. First, a book is summarized, and then the challenges lodged against the book are listed and explained. Next comes a list of the book’s awards and accolades, the author’s website address, and a list of further reading related to the book, the author and illustrator, and censorship efforts. Finally, talking points for “Talking with Readers about the Issues” are presented, along with brief discussions of “Related Books Challenged for Similar Reasons.”

The ISBN for Books Under Fire is 978-0-8389-4982-5.

— Si Dunn

Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas – #bookreview

Seat of Empire

The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas

Jeffrey Stuart Kerr
(Texas Tech University Press – hardcover  )

Austin, Texas, is on the rise now as one of America’s most livable and entertaining cities–particularly if you happen to be young, technologically savvy, and able to spend serious cash.

Viewing the tall glass office buildings and high-rise apartment and condominium towers that now overshadow the state capitol building, it is hard to believe that Austin started out as a single tent on a bank of the  Colorado River in 1838, part of a planned community known as Waterloo, in the new Republic of Texas, on land wrested from Mexico.

Jeffrey Stuart Kerr’s 2013 book focuses, in admirable and intriguing detail, on the tumultuous eight-year period that saw Austin grow from a single dwelling to capital of the Republic of Texas and then in 1846, capital of the State of Texas.

The book includes some fascinating accounts of bitter political rivalries, land speculation, and greed, plus the competing visions of Mirabeau B. Lamar, who imagined a beautiful city rising in the hilly wilderness, and Sam Houston, who saw the Austin site mainly as a vulnerable, isolated target on the frontier.

Indeed, Kerr notes, the Texas capital was built “in a war zone.” The new center of the Texas empire was situated right at the edge of Comanche territory, which included “vast stretches of what is now Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado. Generations of Comanche had fought, bed, and sacrificed to build this empire. They would fight to preserve it.” And they did.  Numerous bloody clashes soon followed. And, Kerr writes, “Austin’s detractors seized upon every Indian attack as proof that the location was a poor one for the government seat.”

Mirabeau Lamar’s vision ultimately prevailed, however, and a major Austin boulevard today bears his name. Sam Houston had to settle for having one of America’s largest cities as his namesake.

— Si Dunn

Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850-1890 – A troubling chapter in American history – #bookreview

Trail Sisters
Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850-1890

Linda Williams Reese
(Texas Tech University Press, hardback)

This is an intriguing study of a little-known and troubling chapter in American history. Indian tribes that included the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Nations had African-American slaves. Some of them also had slaves from other Indian tribes. And many of those slaves were forcibly moved with the Indians from the Southeastern U.S. to the new Oklahoma Territory by the U.S. government during the 1830s and 1840s. Oklahoma historian Linda Reese focuses primarily on the fate of enslaved females prior to, during, and after the Civil War and how their lives were reshaped after they became freedwomen and then citizens of a changing society within Indian Territory. Basically, the author points out in her well-researched book: “They endured a continuous contest of their identity and status in the shifting social terrain of the Indian nations.”