“What we’re seeing now is a very organized attack on books, because the far right is out of ideas,” Dawson said in the video. In 2022 alone, the report found, there were 1,269 attempts to ban books in libraries, although 71% of voters oppose censorship and 67% oppose the efforts to ban books from school libraries, according to the Unite Against Book Bans campaign and ALA findings. The attempts to ban Dawson's book are not isolated incidents: the book was one of 34 consistently challenged books in 2022, according to a recent report from the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“All they’re doing is creating more demand for incredible stories, and helping us all come together in defense of the freedom to read.” “Censorship groups think they’re going to influence young people by banning books,” said Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, which published This Book Is Gay. West High School in the Sioux City Community School District in Iowa removed This Book Is Gay after it was featured on TikTok and subsequently targeted by users on Twitter calling it “pornographic,” and the book was named during a bomb threat that targeted the Hilton Central School District in Hilton, N.Y., on March 22. Evans in their Goodreads review.īut Dawson’s book has become the target, like so many books as of late, of book banning and other censorship efforts. “It should be a must read for all teens so that they never have to feel alone it should be a must read for any parent whose child has come out to them,” said L.J. “This book is truly something I wish I had growing up when I was figuring out who I am,” said Corey Evans, in a Goodreads review. Dawson wrote the book to give hope to those who found their journey rife with confusion instead of wonder and hope, and This Book Is Gay found its audience, positively affected readers’ lives, and became a bestseller along the way.

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