The Houston Chronicle reports that the wagon will be unloading on a Oct. 7 stop at Third Ward’s Kindred Stories, a bookstore owned by Terri Hamm. The Banned Wagon event will have free tote bags, “swag” items, and pizza, plus entertainment provided by DJ Double Dutch. A promotional flyer for the event, explaining the importance of The Banned Wagon, reads, “Book bans are on the rise in America, driven by new laws and regulations limiting the kinds of books that kids can access.”
According to Penguin Random House, the wagon is traveling on a tour to hand out copies of banned books to the communities most affected by the book bans.
The Banned Wagon is coming to Kindred Stories on October 7!!!!
Elizabeth Jordan, general manager of Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, told the Chronicle, “If I am selling a book to a school, I will have to have read the whole book to determine if it’s sexually relevant or sexually explicit. And both of those things, I think, are pretty subjective, and I might rate them differently than others might.”
She continued, “I don’t see why I would put myself at risk to do that. If all the onus is on me, all the liability is on me, and it’s not a job I’m trained to do or my employees are trained to do. I think that the ultimate end result is there’s just going to be a lot fewer books in school libraries because there are going to be fewer bookstores willing to do the work to sell those books, and that’s bad for all Texas students.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
