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

[Lauren Yansick]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Having a list like this is
alarming.

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 8:12 PM Tess Mawhinney-McCool <
tess.mawhinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
*Lauren Yansick*
*Library Media Specialist*
*The Sherman School*
"Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back
the right one." - Neil Gaiman
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