This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, September 24th, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

Every book in a library represents a judgment about the book's value.

Now imagine choosing books for a public school

library and all of the different value systems in competition for representation in a public

school. At the beginning of Band Books Week I spoke with Neil McCluskey

about the inevitable battles over books that crop up when children and parents

don't get to choose their own school. In fourth grade I was I put together like a you know one of these student displays and it was about banned books and the one that really sticks out of my mind is,

Are You Their God?

It's Me Margaret, which was a very popular book

among young people.

It's about a young girl who's growing up

and some of the frustrations that go along with that.

This was of course abhorrent to me, even as a very young person.

But why do schools ban books and how do we understand the process of a school banning a book.

It may not be as explicit as a list of unacceptable books that are, that's posted in a library.

Yeah, so the first thing we have to do is talk about this term banned, so most of what banned

Books Week addresses is challenges like you're probably talking about that you experienced,

where people will say, especially in school libraries,

public school libraries, look, I don't want this book

either in this library or accessible to kids of a certain age, even more angering to people as I don't

want to decide to my child, and all these sorts of challenges to books of their presence in a public library or a public school

library or on a reading list are not really banning the book.

...