The freedom to read is one of our most precious freedoms.

Late February, across Canada, many librarians and teachers celebrate “Freedom to Read Week,” which, according to the event’s organizers, “encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom.”

And that’s a good thing, because that freedom is constantly under attack in Canada.

For example, in 2023 the Peel District School Board, the second-largest school board in Canada, ordered all its school libraries to remove books published before 2008 because their content may violate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. As one student told the CBC, the purge produced “rows and rows of empty shelves with absolutely no books.” Even the children’s classic “Curious George” bit the dust, and there were claims that Anne Frank’s famous diary went to a landfill.

Likewise, the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, the French-language Catholic school board for southwestern Ontario, developed a policy of “Giving Back To Mother Earth” that involved actually burning books with offensive caricatures of Indigenous people and planting trees over the ashes. More recently, Larry Farquharson, a teacher-librarian at H. B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ont., retired (early) in disgust after the Thames Valley District School Board ordered libraries to discard books that didn’t meet DEI standards, including some books of Canadian military history.

Clearly, book banning is alive and well in school libraries. But in recent years, powerful gatekeepers have quietly excluded books and authors from even being published.

Canada’s iconic children’s book publisher Tundra (now owned by Penguin Random House) lists the following guidelines for manuscript submissions on its website: “We are currently only accepting manuscript and art submissions by creators from underrepresented communities.”

Meanwhile, Toronto-based Annick Press, which gave us all of Robert Munsch’s romps through the world of bouncy preschoolers, now proudly announces on its website that its Mentorship Program prioritizes “creators whose perspectives have historically been excluded from children’s publishing … LGBTQ2SIA+ creators, Black creators, Indigenous creators, creators of color, creators living with disabilities, and anyone living at the intersections of these identities.”

But let’s go back to those angry “book banners” who target books in school libraries. Are they all zealous crazies or do some of them, maybe, have a point?

Take the story of one teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, who challenged the presence of two books in her elementary school library. Carolyn had taught for 20 years in Waterloo District School Board and loved her work. In 2022, four minutes into her delegation at a meeting, her school silenced her. Carolyn was NOT calling on the board to ban a book, only to remove it from the elementary school level because she thought is was inappropriate for kids that age. She thought the story of a child confused about his sexuality didn’t belong in a K-6 library, pointing out that many kids aren’t thinking about sex at that age. She then went on to object to a book promoting the safety of puberty-blockers for minors, a highly controversial medical intervention. Her objection was on scientific grounds. The school board removed her from teaching and accused her of transphobia. She sued, endured a long ordeal, but was vindicated by the courts.

The freedom to read is one of our most precious freedoms. Back in 1821, the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine rightly noted that “Those who burn books will in the end burn people,” and we know what happened in Germany a century later. However, we should not reflexively dismiss concerns about age appropriateness.

As for publishers—and, I suspect, the granting agencies that subsidize them—isn’t it time for them to remember that inclusiveness means including everyone who writes well?

Marjorie Gann is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, author of numerous children’s books, and a retired elementary school teacher. Photo: iStock.