Lawsuit Returns Banned Books to This School District’s Shelves

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Lawsuit Returns Banned Books to This School District’s Shelves

The St. Francis school district is returning banned books to shelves after a lawsuit filed by Education Minnesota-St. Francis and the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota was settled. The school district banned books, including The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, after replacing librarians and teachers from the book approval process with the now-defunct Book Looks book rating site run by conservative group Moms for Liberty. The “logic” used to make that decision is beyond me and, apparently, didn’t hold up to scrutiny because the school board’s new book policy includes input from teachers, librarians, and student reps. Education Minnesota-St. Francis President Ryan Fiereck said of the journey to achieving the settlement, “The students’ stories and commitment to fixing this terrible policy were particularly inspiring,” while St. Francis Area School Board Chair Nathan Burr made a statement devoid of accountability for the school board’s actions.

Publishers Weekly Summer Reading List

Publishers Weekly released its summer reading list for the year. They’ve got staff picks, including The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley, author of Nightcrawling, and selections across nine categories including books for young readers. Some of the titles that stood out to me were Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan (Fiction), a complicated love story centering a British trans woman, Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan (Romance) about a successful entrepreneur caring for her mom who has Alzheimer’s, and The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (SFF/Horror), about a college student looking into a horror author’s mysterious past–so meta! Find the full list here.

BookTok Through a Joyful Lens

It’s not often I come across a profile of BookTok that describes it as a joyful space full of queer and BIPOC creators, so it was lovely to read this opinion piece by Yarimar Bonilla. Better yet, it’s a great way to find said creators since she links to some of her favorite people to follow. Bonilla does point out the homogeneity of BookTok but also talks about rediscovering pleasure reading through the creators she follows and the diverse recommendations that lured her to books that didn’t feel like required reading or homework. She also highlights the interesting debates happening online. All I have to say is, listening to audiobooks does count as reading TYVM.

This Year’s Shirley Jackson Awards Nominees Are Here!

We’ve got nominees for the award recognizing outstanding works of horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy. The 2024 list of finalists includes Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror edited by Sofia Ajram (Edited Anthology), The Bone Picker: Native Stories, Alternate Histories by Devon A. Mihesuah (Single-Author Collection), and The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim (Novel). Find the full list here.