Books

Students gathered at the Capitol this week to write letters to Texas lawmakers against book bans. One organizer said she hoped by being there the students would learn the statehouse was their house.

The festival is celebrating its 18th year from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday at the George Washington Carver Museum and Library.

The Lake Travis ISD School Board voted this month to keep one book in the high school library and remove another after a parent with kids in elementary school formally challenged them.

The law, which was scheduled to go into effect in September, requires vendors to rate any books they sell to school districts based on their sexual content and references.

Plaintiffs claimed that the 2023 law, which required book vendors to rate the explicitness of sexual references in materials sold to schools, was unconstitutionally broad.

The African American Policy Forum and The New Republic stopped at Reverie Books last week during a tour of bookstores and libraries to educate communities about how to combat censorship.

The state’s teachers’ union said in a statement it would stand by the state’s public school teachers who “teach the truth.”

A federal judge in Austin temporarily blocked a new state law restricting which books are available in school libraries. The state then appealed. But whether or not the law is upheld, efforts to censor what students can read have intensified in Texas.

Texas had over 90 challenges of over 2,300 books, nearly double the number of attempts as the next state on the list.

House Bill 900 requires book vendors to rate all their materials based on their depictions or references to sex before selling them to schools. Vendors say the law aims to regulate protected speech with “vague and over broad” terms.