Basically, it leaves educators in the dark.'Ī post shared by Books & Books There's a hand-painted mural at Books & Books' Coral Gables store that reads, 'CENSORSHIP LEAVES US IN THE DARK,' and lists dozens of books that have been banned throughout the years, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, and To Kill a Mockingbird. But it's no surprise, given where our politics are today, that book banning and these cultural divisive issues will be exploited in order to make a political statement or to gain political advantage,' Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan tells New Times. 'The language is vague in some of these bills.

But that hasn't stopped Miami's local bookstore owners from taking note of the trend and speaking out against the bans. Though book-banning incidents have been recorded in seven Florida school districts, none have been documented in South Florida's school districts. The Miami-Dade and Broward County public school districts could not immediately answer New Times' emailed questions asking whether they’ve received any book ban requests. This comes as the Republican-led Florida legislature has passed laws such as the Stop WOKE Act (HB 7), which prohibits teaching Critical Race Theory in schools, and the so-called Don't Say Gay bill, which bans instruction involving gender and sexual orientation for many young students. In Florida, the majority of banned books touch on race ( How to Be an Antiracist by Ibrahim Kendi, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison), sexuality ( Forever by Judy Blume, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley), and sexual orientation and gender identity ( Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe). Of Mice and Men is actually within arm's reach.'Īccording to PEN America, which tracks book-banning incidents, Florida tallied the third-highest number of school book banning incidents in the nation, trailing only Texas and Pennsylvania. While books have been banned in America since the days of the Mayflower, there has been a recent surge as an unprecedented number of parents, activists, and elected officials request scores of books to be banned from classrooms and libraries. ' Handmaid's Tale - we have a copy of it right now. 'Wow, look at this - I can tell you that Sapphire is right here,' Sandler tells New Times as he cross-references book titles on his shelves with the banned-book list shared by PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary free expression. (The complete list is included at the end of this story.) It's not intentional, but that's what happens when you run a nonprofit mobile library in a state that has so far banned more than 200 books in various school districts since July of 2021.

Nathaniel Sandler is surrounded by banned books at the Wynwood headquarters of Bookleggers Library.

Dime by er frank