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

[My9lives124]

Thank you for sharing this. It's so important just to be aware of this
nonsense
😞

Ann Kauffman

Ann Kauffman
Library Media Specialist



On Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 10:11 AM Lauren Yansick <yansickl at shermanschool.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CASL-L mailing list
>> CASL-L at mylist.net
>> https://mylist.net/listinfo/casl-l
>>
>
>
> --
> *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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>
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