ST PETERSBURG, Fla. — Attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year were the highest they’ve been in two decades, according to the American Library Association.
The mission of one Tampa Bay used bookstore has always been to rescue books that are getting thrown away, but now The Book Rescuer is adding access to all books in their original form to its mission.
“We actually take the approach of any book that's ever been challenged or banned, tried to remove from people's access, and we want to highlight those books and get them into more people's hands,” explained The Book Rescuer co-owner George Brooks.
He runs the store with his wife, Sarah, out of a warehouse in St. Petersburg now with 100,000 books. They’ve had a small bookshelf for banned books since they opened this location in November, but Brooks said it wasn’t until he posted a few pictures on Facebook last week that the storm of support for the challenged content started.
“We've actually already sold out an entire row of this,” the couple showed ABC Action News just days after the post.
“One thing that's nice is when you tell a human not to do something, thousands of other humans are gonna be ‘like, oh, yeah, well, I would like to do that,'" exclaimed Brooks.
Brooks started the section after he noticed local teachers dropping off boxes upon boxes of books.
“We've had teachers come scared and totally given us their entire library because the list isn't in black and white,” he explained.
The list isn’t really “a list” in Florida. Bans differ from state to state, and many are based on much broader regulations of content under several laws Governor Ron DeSantis passed in the last year, including Parental Rights In Education, school transparency, and stopping “woke indoctrination.”
For example, the Hillsborough County School board banned ‘This Book Is Gay’ from middle school libraries in March due to the law preventing classroom instruction on "sexual orientation" and "gender identity."
The section in Brooks store includes Holes, which was banned for violence and child labor, and even the Holy Bible, which was just banned in Utah schools for “vulgarity and violence.”
“I’ve been here quite a few times. I love reading. I just actually finished two books today, through last night and today,” Bella Melby-Mazzei told ABC Action News as she shopped for more books. She’s a high school senior in New Port Richie.
“I have read quite a few banned books. My mom's a teacher and they’re making her lay out all her books and they’re going to go through and take out any books that they see or think that shouldn’t be in school… and I think that’s not okay,” she expressed.
She showed us a key chain she had protesting banned books and said her mom is getting her a shirt as well.
Both the American Library Association and the nonprofit PEN America for free expression are tracking record book bans across the country.
PEN’s analysis tracked nearly 1,500 books banned in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year.
That’s compared to about 2,500 in the entire 2021-2022 school year.
PEN also reports that the majority of banned books address LGBTQ+ themes or contain protagonists/prominent characters of color.
Brooks said the support and demand for these books have now resulted in the content going digital.
They just launched a website for anyone to submit voiceovers or record videos of themselves reading banned or challenged books aloud for others to listen to on a podcast or Youtube, which is coming soon.
“Even if you can't find your local bookstore that has them available, you'd be able to go online and watch and listen to them and just free access and that's what it's about,” Brooks explained.
He added that within days they had dozens of offers from the community and even professional actors to contribute to reading books.
Their first book will be Anne Frank. For information on when the content will launch, you can follow The Book Rescuers on Facebook or visit their new banned book websiteto get involved.
Governor DeSantis has called the book ban theory in the state of Florida a hoax. One point he clarified was that teachers won’t face felony charges for having banned books in their classrooms but that “Statute 847.012 has been in law for many years and carries a felony penalty for the distribution of pornographic material to children.”
In May, PEN, Penguin Random House, authors, and parents filed a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District for removing 10 books related to race and the LGBTQ community.
The most recent piece of literature pulled from a Florida elementary school is a poem by Amanda Gormon, “The Hill We Climb,” which she read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
