[CASL-L] Unprofessional online book review Site to be aware of

[Tess Mawhinney-McCool]

Hi Everyone,
I wanted to share this article, "What is Take Back the Classroom
<https://bookriot.com/what-is-take-back-the-classroom/>?"  from Kelly
Jensen's *Book Riot*. It's an interesting look at yet another
unprofessional online book review site. It's something to be aware of as it
makes it much easier for those with a "vested interest" to seek challenges.
It basically does the work for those people. It has an index of schools
within each state (scroll to the bottom of the article), and then it breaks
down what "inappropriate" books your school has and then flags them under
different categories. This is all run by volunteers. For example, my high
school library has 102 "inappropriate books," and nearly all of them are
labeled as "sexually explicit" for simple things such as using the F word
to indicate the act. It also incorrectly states that these books meet the
legal threshold for "pervasively vulgar," which would mean they could be
removed under the law. The court has never defined what that term means,
yet this group seems to have figured it out.  The other books are "red
flag" warnings, and surprisingly (not) those books are all by or about
LGBTQ+ or people of color.
I thought it was worth sharing just to have on your radar. On a much
happier note, yet another overly broad and unconstitutional book banning
law was just struck down in Missouri
<https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2025-11-18/missouri-court-strikes-down-book-ban-law-that-pushed-libraries-to-remove-hundreds-of-titles>
!

Thanks,
Tess McCool
Suffield High School Librarian
L4L Trainer
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