By SLJ staff

In this Banned Books Week edition of News Bites, the New York Public Library has launched a teen-focused "Books for All" campaign; EveryLibrary Institute and Book Riot release the results of their Parent Perception Survey; PEN America, NCAC, and ALA offer resources.

It's Banned Books Week 2023. While there are many in-person events in libraries and bookstores across the country, these virtual events will allow everyone to hear important conversations at this critical time.

These two titles center young Indigenous protagonists and integrate coming-of-age tropes with fantasy and folklore.

As the governor of California signs a law to protect books and materials at schools, public records requests reveal librarians in one Florida county were told to remove all books with LGBTQ characters, a survey from EveryLibrary and BookRiot shows how parents and guardians really feel about public libraries, and more in the latest Censorship News.

The 2023–24 Mathical Collection Development Awards, presented by Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute in partnership with School Library Journal, will award $700 to up to 32 Title I K–12 U.S. school libraries to purchase Mathical Book Prize–winning titles for their schools.

EveryLibrary has joined the School Library Journal (SLJ) Blog Network. Covering legislation, censorship, funding, and advocacy, “Politics in Practice” will encompass the full beat of the nonprofit organization, which solicits support for libraries—K–12, public, and academic—nationwide.

The longtime literacy advocate and host of Reading Rainbow and the LeVar Burton Reads podcast is the first actor to serve as honorary chair of the annual event, which is Oct. 1-7 this year. 

Ariana Grande, Guillermo del Toro, Padma Lakshmi, Roxane Gay, Gabrielle Union, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Margaret Cho, and Ron Perlman are among the upwards of 175 public figures who signed an open letter calling on creative communities to leverage their voices to stop book bans. 

With Banned Books Week less than two weeks away, the American Library Association publishes information on documented attempts to censor books and other materials in school, public, and academic libraries in the first eight months of the year.