Censorship was a big source of discussion for my team and I in 2018 as we navigated our individual prejudices and the murky territory that is a library with no collection management policy. As we worked our way through the writing of a new policy we were forced to have some truthful discussions about censorship and what we believe this means for our K-12 collection.

Having come from a classroom teaching background I usually function with the ‘what’s best for the child’ lens on. When discussing the senior fiction collection I found this easy and believe that we should not censor what the students read and can borrow. Along the path of the creating a new policy we formulated a strong buying guideline so that as long as books met the purchasing criteria then they were able to be added to our collection.

I’ve also found that my own personal reading preferences as a teenager impacted my thoughts on censorship. I was a student who grew up in a middle class family, went to a private school and had a pretty charmed life yet I loved to read quite ‘extreme’ books. Looking back I think that because my life was so mainstream that reading about drug addled teenagers or young adults dealing with mental illness allowed me to explore others in society that I normally would have no idea about. I think that this really helps me understand that students should be able to read whatever they choose without justification.

However when it came to the junior collection I found it a touch more difficult, in particular the graphic novels. Despite some of our team thinking that we should be shielding our younger students from issues such as sexual orientation or realities of refugees I strongly feel that all students should have a right to read this particularly when it reflects not just our school community but also our wider society. However, when it came to the graphic novels I found that I did remove some from our collection and refuse to purchase others based on the gratuitous violence that they portrayed. I feel that when the images are displayed in front of you it is much more powerful than just reading words and creating a picture in your imagination.

I think that going forward it is something that I will have to keep thinking about and continue to check in with myself to see whether I am upholding the rights of the child or rather letting my own opinions jump in.