Let's support buying banned books on sale in Florida!

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/4043876-our-goal-is-to-spread-literature-florida-couple-sells-banned-books-at-new-book-store/

‘Our goal is to spread literature’: Florida couple sells banned book. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

An echo report published in Changing America: Shared Destiny, Shared Responsibility- published in The Hill* blog by Jack Royer:

"Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like 'What? We can't have that.'"

Pinellas County couple selling banned books at new book store.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park.

Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

They maintain a shelf of books banned across the state and country.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (WFLA) — A couple in Florida is seeking to provide the people of Pinellas County with more accessible, affordable books — including some titles that have been banned by schools in the area.

George and Sarah Brooks have turned their love of books into a full-time job after opening their store, The Book Rescuers, in Pinellas Park. Their goal is to sell donated books at inexpensive prices, with the priciest book in the shop costing only $8.

The Brooks’ effort began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they found out some online booksellers were trashing titles that had little resale value.

“It blew our mind. We were like, ‘That’s insane, can we take your trash and sort it?'” Sarah Brooks remembered.

“Books were always very important to me. So when I found out someone was throwing away 10,000 pounds of books a week away, I was like ‘What? We can’t have that,'” she added.

Among the books available at The Book Rescuers are titles banned in some school districts across Florida and around the country. 

A shelf dedicated to these “banned books” contains entire sets donated by teachers who were told they needed to remove them from their classrooms.

The store’s owners, however, insist their efforts have nothing to do with politics.

“I understand that people don’t want their kids reading certain things and I also feel like you don’t have a right to tell me what my kids can read,” she added. 

*(NEXSTAR) – (By Alex Martichoux in April 2023) Attempts to ban books in libraries and schools reached a 20-year high, the American Library Association said. The group announced it had documented 1,269 demands to censor more than 2,500 titles in 2022.

That’s the highest number recorded since the ALA, which advocates for expanding libraries, literacy and intellectual freedom, started keeping track in 2001.

The 13 most challenged titles in 2022, according to the ALA, were:

“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe
“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
“Flamer” by Mike Curato
“Looking for Alaska” by John Green
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez
“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas
“Crank” by Ellen Hopkins
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
“This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson

The ALA defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”

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Let's write about the illiterate people that want to ban books!

 Stand up to moral police, book banners

This echo opinion letter was published in TCPalm Stuart News in Florida:

Dear editor: I want to address the book bans happening in this state- Florida.

Parents essentially can now pull a book they think is questionable. Many have done so without even reading the book. How can you deem something inappropriate you yourself have not read?

The ignorance and audacity of these people is astounding. They are literally saying with their actions, "Well, I don't know what it's about, so it must be bad; let's ban it."Case in point, a young Black poet's work can no longer be read by younger students. Not one person who called for the ban has read it. They are banning things they know nothing about, perpetrating ignorant, baseless moral decisions for every Floridian.

I don't need moral police❗😠

This is America, not Afghanistan, where the moral police walk around punishing those they deem immoral.

Wake up, Florida! 

For every ignorant person that bans a book, there should be thousands of us fighting it. Personally, I encourage everyone to read the banned books. I've read almost all of them — some as a child, some as a teen and some as an adult.

My favorite book at 9 years old was "To Kill a Mockingbird" and I can honestly say it did not harm me in any way. All it did was help me be a more empathetic person to others. I don't see any of the myriad of ignorant reasons these people have come up with for banning books like this.

So Florida, stand up to ignorance. Read and share these books and use your voices and votes against this moral policing done by the extremists who haven't even read the books in question.

Reading kills no one; but ignorance does.

Adele Burich, Vero Beach