Who We Are
If you’ve ended up here, you’re probably like us. We’re Americans who after the most recent presidential election were left feeling…adrift. Like you, we were sure kindness would win. It just had to! And then it didn’t, and we were left feeling helpless. Wanting to do something to effect some change, we looked to the things we use to escape the sharp edges of our realities: books.
We are avid readers and parents of young girls whose love of reading we try to foster and encourage with every passing day. But fostering that love has become a fight. History is being reshaped little by little every day. We want our daughters to know how awful humankind can be, so that they can seek to be the opposite. We want them to see themselves and their friends reflected back at them in the books they choose. We want them to see love in all its forms, not just what fits a certain ideal being forced upon them and their peers. We want them to stay curious. What kind of connection and relationship with reading can we hope to foster if the only books our children are permitted to read show a narrow, skewed, elitist and most often whitewashed version of a narrative?
With BBE, we hope to expand access to banned and challenged books to anyone who wants the chance to experience them. We want our children and yours to dive into stories about all versions of love, hate, beauty, history and everything in between.
All human experience is valid, and we hope you’ll find something that resonates with you here.
What We Do
The list of banned and challenged books across America grows by the thousands each year. Censorship is growing at a rapid rate, often for reasons such as a book containing “difficult ideas or information.” When a request to remove a book from a school or public library is made, that book becomes challenged — the first step in getting it banned.
The list we at BBE provide will always be a mixture of both categories, as we hope to spread awareness of challenged books in hopes that they don’t eventually become banned books. On our list you will find twenty-five of the most current frequently banned and challenged books, with a separate list of children’s picture books that often face scrutiny as well as a list of books that historically have been widely censored in our country.
All you need to do is select the book you’d like to check out. We’ll send you the book, and in the next thirty days, you send it back to us so that it can be passed on to the next person in line to check it out. Think of it like old school Netflix (if you’re old enough) only for the spreading of culture and knowledge.
- Have a thought on a book that you think belongs on our list? Feel free to send it our way via the email address at the bottom of this page.
- Want to donate to our cause? We’d love it. Click through our merch page to select an amount you’d like to donate to BBE so that we can grow our library and increase accessibility just a little bit more.
- Want to donate a book? We’d be thrilled! Send us an email and we’ll send you a shipping label to send one our way at your convenience.