education

Indiana Banned Books

Banned Books 2022

In January, I put together a list of books that various far-right protest groups in Indiana were trying to get banned from Indiana school systems in various towns (Carmel, Fort Wayne, Greenfield, Pendleton, Indianapolis). There are a lot of books that have either been challenged or soon will be – 148 titles and counting.

What these groups are doing is taking book titles compiled by a national organization as “inappropriate books” and searching online catalogs or sending people into school libraries or public libraries to see if those books are available. If they are, they report back to one of the local organizations to get a letter-writing campaign from people in that district to protest the books. They’re also sharing books in a couple of facebook groups to get disruptions going on in as many school systems as they can around the state.

The books are called “inappropriate” if they teach about racism, history of marginalized people, LGBTQA+ subjects, immigration, sex education, gun control, sexism… anything that would challenge white male hegemony.

It sounds like these same people are in connected to the legislation going through the statehouse as well – they’ve referenced it.

Some links where I gathered lists of books they are working on banning:

Sources:
Unify Carmel – How To Search For Inappropriate Books
Facebook page – Mary In the Library
Facebook page – Mama Bears in Carmel Clay Schools
Facebook page – Moms for Liberty – Hamilton County, IN (PUBLIC)

I put together a wishlist on IndyReads online store at bookshop.org if you are interested in helping me put some of these books in our little free library. I’ve been buying diverse books for the last couple of months, but I’d be happy to have more.

  • The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story – The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper, et al.
  • The 1619 Project: Born on the Water – Nikole Hannah-Jones, Renée Watson, et al.
  • #Blacklivesmatter: Protesting Racism – Rachael L. Thomas
  • 10,000 Dresses – Marcus Ewert and Rex Ray
  • A Big Mooncake for Little Star – Grace Lin
  • A Good Kind of Trouble – Lisa Moore Ramée
  • A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
  • A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches – Martin Luther King
  • A Young People’s History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror – Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff
  • All Are Welcome – Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman
  • And Tango Makes Three – Peter Parnell, Justin Richardson, et al.
  • Antiracist Baby Board Book – Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky
  • Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls – Lindsay King-Miller
  • Ask Me How I Got Here – Christine Heppermann
  • Autoboyography – Christina Lauren
  • Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education – Mike Rose
  • Backwards Day – S. Bear Bergman and Kd Diamond
  • Beautiful – Amy Reed
  • Berlin Boxing Club, the PB – Robert Sharenow
  • Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Beyond the Gender Binary – Alok Vaid-Menon and Ashley Lukashevsky
  • Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice – Denisha Jones, Jesse Hagopian, et al.
  • Blankets: A Graphic Novel – Craig Thompson
  • Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope – Jodie Patterson and Charnelle Pinkney Barlow
  • Breathless – Jennifer Niven
  • Brick by Brick – Heidi Woodward Sheffield
  • Call Me Max – Kyle Lukoff
  • Call Me Tree / Llámame Árbol – Maya Christina Gonzalez
  • Calvin – Vanessa Ford, Jr. Ford, et al.
  • Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas
  • Count Me in – Varsha Bajaj
  • Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement – Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, et al.
  • Dead End – Jason Myers
  • Dear Martin – Nic Stone
  • Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes, and Anecdotes from A to Z – Irene Latham, Charles Waters, et al.
  • Doing It – Hannah Witton
  • Don’t Hug Doug: (He Doesn’t Like It) – Carrie Finison and Daniel Wiseman
  • Don’t Touch My Hair! – Sharee Miller
  • Drama: A Graphic Novel – Raina Telgemeier
  • Dreamers – Yuyi Morales
  • Dreaming in Cuban – Cristina García
  • Dress Codes for Small Towns – Courtney Stevens
  • Exit Here. – Jason Myers
  • Full Disclosure – Camryn Garrett
  • Full, Full, Full of Love – Trish Cooke and Paul Howard
  • Gender Queer: A Memoir – Maia Kobabe
  • George (Scholastic Gold) – Alex Gino
  • Ghost Boys – Jewell Parker Rhodes
  • Graceling – Kristin Cashore
  • Hands Up! – Breanna J. McDaniel and Shane W. Evans
  • Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
  • How to Be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
  • How We Fight White Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance – Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin
  • I Am Enough – Grace Byers and Keturah A. Bobo
  • I Am Jazz – Jessica Herthel, Jazz Jennings, et al.
  • I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter – Erika L. Sánchez
  • I Am Rosa Parks – Brad Meltzer and Christopher Eliopoulos
  • Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story about Gender and Friendship – Jessica Walton and Dougal MacPherson
  • It’s Not the Stork!: A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends – Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley
  • It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, Gender, and Sexual Health – Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley
  • It’s So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families – Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley
  • Jack (Not Jackie) – Erica Silverman and Holly Hatam
  • Jacob’s New Dress – Sarah Hoffman, Ian Hoffman, et al.
  • Jamie Is Jamie: A Book about Being Yourself and Playing Your Way – Afsaneh Moradian and Maria Bogade
  • Jesus Land: A Memoir; With a New Preface by the Author – Julia Scheeres
  • Julián Is a Mermaid – Jessica Love
  • l8r, g8r – Lauren Myracle
  • Leah on the Offbeat – Becky Albertalli
  • Let’s Talk about Love – Claire Kann
  • Let’s Talk about Race – Julius Lester and Karen Barbour
  • Lexicon – Max Barry
  • Looking for Alaska – John Green
  • Making a Baby – Rachel Greener and Clare Owen
  • Malala: My Story of Standing Up for Girls’ Rights – Malala Yousafzai and Sarah J. Robbins
  • Marvin Redpost #3: Is He a Girl?
  • Max and the Talent Show – Kyle Lukoff and Luciano Lozano
  • Max on the Farm – Kyle Lukoff and Luciano Lozano
  • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Revised Edition) – Jesse Andrews
  • Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor – Layla Saad and Robin Diangelo
  • Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress – Christine Baldacchino and Isabelle Malenfant
  • My Princess Boy – Cheryl Kilodavis and Suzanne DeSimone
  • Nineteen Minutes – Jodi Picoult
  • Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness – Anastasia Higginbotham
  • Nuestra Clase es una Familia – Shannon Olsen and Sandie Sonke
  • Odd One Out – Nic Stone
  • Oliver Button Is a Sissy – Tomie dePaola and Tomie dePaola
  • One of a Kind, Like Me / Único Como Yo – Laurin Mayeno and Robert Liu-Trujillo
  • One of Us Is Lying – Karen M. McManus
  • One of Us Is Next: The Sequel to One of Us Is Lying – Karen M. McManus
  • Our Own Private Universe – Robin Talley
  • Out of Darkness – Ashley Hope Pérez
  • Perfectly Good White Boy – Carrie Mesrobian
  • Pink Is for Boys – Robb Pearlman and Eda Kaban
  • Pinky and Rex and the Bully: Ready-To-Read Level 3 – James Howe and Melissa Sweet
  • Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag – Rob Sanders and Steven Salerno
  • Red: A Crayon’s Story – Michael Hall
  • Rick – Alex Gino
  • Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression – Iris Gottlieb and Meredith Talusan
  • Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation – Duncan Tonatiuh
  • Sex Is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and You – Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth
  • Sex: An Uncensored Introduction – Nikol Hasler and Michael Capozzola
  • Shades of People – Sheila M. Kelly and Shelley Rotner
  • Sissy: A Coming-Of-Gender Story – Jacob Tobia
  • So You Want to Talk about Race – Ijeoma Oluo
  • Sparkle Boy – Leslea Newman and Maria Mola
  • Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
  • Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You – Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi, et al.
  • Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped from the Beginning – Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
  • Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom – Bell Hooks
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie
  • The Berlin Boxing Club – Robert Sharenow
  • The Boy in the Red Dress – Kristin Lambert
  • The Boy Who Wore a Dress – Ben Franks and Jarrod Becker
  • The Boys Body Book (Fifth Edition): Everything You Need to Know for Growing Up! (Puberty Guide, Health Education, Books for Growing Up) – Kelli Dunham, Steve Bjorkman, et al.
  • The Breakaways – Cathy G. Johnson
  • The Colors of Us – Karen Katz
  • The Day You Begin – Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López
  • The Every Body Book: The LGBTQ+ Inclusive Guide for Kids about Sex, Gender, Bodies, and Families – Rachel E. Simon and Noah Grigni
  • The Gender Wheel: a story about bodies and gender for every body – Maya Christina Gonzalez
  • The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas and Nikki Giovanni
  • The Haters – Jesse Andrews
  • The Infinite Moment of Us – Lauren Myracle
  • The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from the New Yorker – Jelani Cobb and David Remnick
  • The New Queer Conscience – Adam Eli and Ashley Lukashevsky
  • The Other Boy – M. G. Hennessey and Sfe R. Monster
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
  • The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family – Ibtihaj Muhammad, S. K. Ali, et al.
  • The Secret Loves of Geeks – Margaret Atwood, Gerard Way, et al.
  • The Sissy Duckling: Book and CD – Harvey Fierstein and Henry Cole
  • The Skin I’m in: A First Look at Racism – Pat Thomas and Lesley Harker
  • The Skin You Live in – Michael Tyler and David Lee Csicsko
  • The Story of Ruby Bridges – Robert Coles and George Ford
  • The Story of Ruby Bridges: A Biography Book for New Readers – Arlisha Norwood Alston
  • The Temptation of Adam – Dave Connis
  • They She He Me: Free to Be! – Maya Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Sg
  • They, She, He easy as ABC – Maya Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Sg
  • This Book Is Gay – Juno Dawson and David Levithan
  • This One Summer – Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
  • Triangles – Ellen Hopkins
  • Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School – Carla Shalaby
  • Understanding Gender – Juno Dawson
  • Vampire Academy – Richelle Mead
  • What Girls Are Made of – Elana K. Arnold
  • When a Bully is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times – Maya Christina Gonzalez
  • When Aidan Became a Brother – Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita
  • Where Did I Come From?: An Illustrated Childrens Book on Human Sexuality – Peter Mayle
  • Who Has What?: All about Girls’ Bodies and Boys’ Bodies – Robie H. Harris and Nadine Bernard Westcott
Continue ReadingIndiana Banned Books

2015-02-19 Recently Read

The New Yorker: R U There?
“A new counseling service harnesses the power of the text message.”

David Carr, New York Times: “Calling Out Bill Cosby’s Media Enablers, Including Myself”
“What took so long is that those in the know kept it mostly to themselves. No one wanted to disturb the Natural Order of Things, which was that Mr. Cosby was beloved; that he was as generous and paternal as his public image; and that his approach to life and work represented a bracing corrective to the coarse, self-defeating urban black ethos.”

hyperallergic.com: A Portal to Unite the Smithsonian Libraries Artists’ Books Collection
The project to get the Artists’ Books Collection site up was years in the making, with cross-institution collaboration from the Smithsonian American Art Museum/ National Portrait Gallery Library, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library, Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library, and the Warren M. Robbins Library at the National Museum of African Art.

Typespec: Raised from the dead: Doves Type in digital form
“The Doves Type legend is one of the most enduring in typographic history and probably the most infamous. It’s the story of a typeface and a bitter feud between the two partners of Hammersmith’s celebrated Doves Press, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, leading to the protracted disposal of their unique metal type into London’s River Thames. Starting in 1913 with the initial dumping of the punches and matrices, by the end of January 1917 an increasingly frail Cobden-Sanderson had made hundreds of clandestine trips under cover of darkness to Hammersmith Bridge and systematically thrown 12lb parcels of metal type into the murky depths below. As one person so aptly commented on Twitter recently, this notorious tale bears all the hallmarks of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.”

NY Magazine: Why Oklahoma Lawmakers Voted to Ban AP U.S. History
“The conservative lawmakers’ issues with the course, which was taken by 344,938 students in 2013, can be traced back to retired high-school history teacher Larry S. Krieger. Two years ago, the College Board released a revised framework for the exam, which took effect this fall. Krieger was incensed by the changes. “As I read through the document, I saw a consistently negative view of American history that highlights oppressors and exploiters,” he said during a conference call in August, according to Newsweek.”

Continue Reading2015-02-19 Recently Read

My Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Schedule

I think I’m probably a bit over-scheduled for GenCon this coming weekend – I’m signed up for these writing workshops and seminars. I’m thinking my brain is going to be pretty fried if I attempt to do all of this, so I’ll probably skip out on some of them strategically. Fortunately they’re all in the same area of the convention center, so getting from one to another will be easy. And I can take some breaks and visit the Exhibit Hall.

WKS1345344 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 1: Plotting and Planning on Thu at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345352 (Writer’s Craft: Don’t Tell Your Story, Show It! on Thu at 12:00 PM)
WKS1345347 (Writer’s Craft: The Structure of Scenes on Thu at 01:00 PM)
SEM1345249 (Writer’s Craft: Should You Plot or Not? on Thu at 03:00 PM)
SEM1345063 (Writer’s Craft: Literary Alchemy on Thu at 05:00 PM)

WKS1345345 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 2: Creating Scenes on Fri at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345260 (Business of Writing: Career Building on Fri at 12:00 PM)
SEM1345351 (Writer’s Craft: Point of View – What is the point? on Fri at 01:00 PM)
WKS1345348 (Writer’s Craft: Tension on Every Page on Fri at 03:00 PM)
SEM1345264 (Writer’s Craft: Novel Outlines on Fri at 04:00 PM)

WKS1345346 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 3: Putting on the Polish on Sat at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345284 (Exploring Genres: Urban Fantasy on Sat at 11:00 AM)
WKS1345350 (Writer’s Craft: Schrödinger’s Plot on Sat at 01:00 PM)
SEM1345301 (Writer’s Craft: Screenwriting for Novelists on Sat at 02:00 PM)

IN scoping out photos of previous year’s events, it looks like they don’t provide tables in the writer’s workshops, which is a little frustrating. It seems like a little thing but when you’re sitting in seminars all day, having a table for your laptop is a world of difference in convenience. I can’t imagine not taking my laptop, but without tables… I guess I’ll have to see. I hate taking notes by hand anymore.

I missed out on the Midwest Writer’s Workshop this year, but I’m planning to attend next year. I hope I’ll have my novel done by then, and a good start on a second one.

GenCon 2010

Continue ReadingMy Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Schedule

Tear down wall of denial so we can fix broken IPS

former IPS School Board President Kelly Bentley has some thoughts about how to fix IPS in this Indy Star editorial: Tear down wall of denial so we can fix broken IPS | Indianapolis Star | indystar.com.

Even recent good news about IPS is tempered by the reality that the numbers often aren’t as positive as they appear. The community rallied around a report last month that the district’s graduation rate, which a few years ago was well below 50 percent, climbed again last school year. Yet, a significant portion of that increase was achieved by a heightened reliance on academic waivers, which means many students really didn’t meet all the requirements for graduation but received diplomas anyway. Certainly, waivers are justified in some cases. But when more than 40 percent of graduates at Arlington High School receive waivers, as occurred last year, alarms should go off in the district headquarters and in the community.

Continue ReadingTear down wall of denial so we can fix broken IPS

University Domestic Partnership Benefits at Risk

In a neat bit of investigative work, Bil Browning discovered that SJR-7 author Brandt Hershman’s statements about the bill not affecting domestic partnership benefits for Purdue and Indiana University faculty members is not only false, but that he wrote the bill specifically to target those rights.

Bill uncovered legislation by Hershman to repeal those rights that had been killed several ago in the legislature – exposing Hershmans’s true intent. Read more about that here…

Now this won’t just mean that the faculty members who enjoy domestic partnership benefits will lose them if SJR-7 passes. It will mean that Purdue, IU, Ball State and other universities won’t be able to attract quality faculty members in the future, which will have a devastating effect on the quality of education in Indiana. The state of Wisconsin can testify to that:

This summer, Wisconsin lost a good deal of its edge in the nanotech revolution thanks to the Legislature’s refusal to provide domestic partner benefits to university employees. That refusal, plus the Legislature’s push to ban gay marriage, has prompted a leading nanotech researcher, Robert Carpick, an associate engineering physics professor, to leave the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a job at the University of Pennsylvania.

And if that, along with Michigan’s recent repeal of benefits for university employees doesn’t properly scare the crap out of Purdue and Indiana University, what’s going on in Kentucky right now should. A bill to strip universities of those rights in that state is moving through their state legislature, with some pretty serious affects:

Last year, during the debate over bills designed to improve Kentucky’s lagging math and science scores, it came up that the higher educational institutions in the state of Kentucky graduated only one qualified physics teacher last year. One.

Kentucky’s ability to attract qualified faculty to their sagging universities will die off as well, and the already poor quality of education that can’t even produce physics teachers now will deteriorate further.

Continue ReadingUniversity Domestic Partnership Benefits at Risk

Republican Anti-Intellectualism and the dumbing down of American Culture

“Brain Drain” by Mark Crispin Miller:

For reasons too complex for us to hazard here, the anti‑intellectuals are finally on the side of power at its most unforgiving and voracious. And so they give a pass to those professors who are at the service of such power, while jeering anyone–inside or outside the Academy–who thinks to raise a fuss about how wrong it is. For them, this isn’t something to discuss, because discussion is itself suspicious, even dangerous–the sport of jerk‑offs and Prevaricators. Thus there is no point in arguing with them–and yet no wisdom in attempting to ignore them. And such is true not only of the Bush regime’s most unrestrained supporters, but of the Bush regime itself–a fact that now requires a lot of careful thought, and something more.
And yet it’s just such thinking that has all but disappeared since 9/11–as it always disappears in time of war. In bringing down the World Trade Center (a mile from where I sit right now) and ravaging the Pentagon, the terrorists not only murdered thousands, and left tens of thousands more bereft, and devastated lower Manhattan, and sparked the wreckage of the local and the national economy. Through that spectacular atrocity, the killers also managed, at one blow, to knock the brains clean out of countless good Americans. Although those citizens had started out that day with all their wits intact, by dinner‑time they sounded way much like Fred–a terroristic consequence a lot less hideous, surely, than what happened in the air and on the ground, and yet even more destructive in the long run. For while we can and will no doubt rebuild beyond the shattered lives and property, the prospects aren’t as upbeat for our frail democracy, which cannot function if too many people think like Bill O’Reilly and his fans.

Continue ReadingRepublican Anti-Intellectualism and the dumbing down of American Culture

College Chemistry Humor

Author Unknown

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry midterm: "Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof." Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

Continue ReadingCollege Chemistry Humor

Actual Driving School Exam Answers

Author Unknown

The following are a sampling of REAL answers received on exams given by the California Department of Transportation’s driving school (read Saturday Traffic School for moving violation offenders.)

Q: Do you yield when a blind pedestrian is crossing the road?
A: What for? He can’t see my license plate.

Q: Who has the right of way when four cars approach a four-way stop at the same time?
A: The pick up truck with the gun rack and the bumper sticker saying, "Guns don’t kill people. I do."

Continue ReadingActual Driving School Exam Answers

Student Bloopers, Part 8 – Mars and Venus

Author Unknown

Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Well, here’s a prime example of the differences between Men and Women offered by an English professor at Southern Methodist University:

English 44A
SMU, Creative Writing
Prof. Miller

In-class Assignment for Wednesday:

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

Continue ReadingStudent Bloopers, Part 8 – Mars and Venus

Student Bloopers, Part 7 – Science Facts & Legends

Author Unknown

The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussions. Most were from 5th and 6th graders. They illustrate Mark Twain’s contention that the ‘most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.’

Question: What is one horsepower?
Answer: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second.

You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don’t hear it you got hit, so never mind.

Continue ReadingStudent Bloopers, Part 7 – Science Facts & Legends