Efforts to censor teenage access to books in the United States swelled in 2021 after a video of a parent at a Fairfax County, Virginia school board meeting demanding removal of the graphic novel Gender Queer from the high school library went viral.
[1] Afterward, libraries and classrooms across the US became targets of coordinated campaigns frequently led or funded by right-wing activists.
[2][3][4][5] In April 2022, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) introduced the Books Unbanned program in response to the movement, offering free BPL ecards to teens and young adults aged 13 to 21 anywhere in the US.
[15] In August 2022, a teacher in Oklahoma was put on administrative leave after posting the QR code for BPL's Books Unbanned in her classroom.
[18] The teacher subsequently resigned and, several months later, accepted a job with the Brooklyn Public Library.