Censorship, selection, and YAL

MacLeod provides a historical overview of censorship and children's literature. What values, beliefs, and constructions of childhood (or young adulthood) are at stake? Where have the tensions existed in both socially liberal and conservative pressures to select or restrict access to books based on "socially morality"?

You might read our second articles as more of a contemporary case study of censorship and selection in schools. Curwood, et al.'s, article explores the need to include books with GLBTQ content in the curriculum, some of the reasons teachers hesitate to do so, and how to be proactive in selecting literature and preparing to justify one's professional choices.

If you would like to do some outside research, The American Library Association and the NCTE's pages on censorship have some great resources that might help you think about both the values at stake and the realities of how teachers, librarians, and other community members negotiate disagreements around books.

Where do you stand on these issues? Should young adults have access to all books? Is there a place at which you would draw a line in the name of protecting young readers? If so, how and who should decide what the criteria for selection is? Any quotes strike you as worthy of further discussion? Post them!