[Title: Measures across the country aim to restrict what children can read. - Context: moral panic in the US, banning books in schools, non-expert prejudice-based supervision, enabled with new controversial laws]

In one Virginia school district this fall, parents will receive an email notification every time their child checks out a book. In a Florida school system, teachers are purging their classrooms of texts that mention racism, sexism, gender identity or oppression. And a Pennsylvania school district is convening a panel of adults to sign off on every title that school librarians propose buying. The start of the 2022-2023 school year will usher in a new era of education in some parts of America -- one in which school librarians have less freedom to choose books and schoolchildren less ability to read books they find intriguing, experts say.
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"This is a state-sponsored purging of ideas and identities that has no precedent in the United States of America," said John Chrastka, EveryLibrary's executive director. "We're witnessing the silencing of stories and the suppressing of information [that will make] the next generation less able to function in society."
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Meanwhile, a flurry of parent-staffed websites reviewing books for inappropriate content have appeared -- including "Between the Book Covers," whose website says "professional review sites cannot be entrusted," and BookLook.info, a place for taking a closer look at the books in our children's hands." (Virginia's Bedford County district now suggests the latter as a resource for parents.) There are also Facebook groups like Utah's "LaVerna in the Library," which "collects naughty children's books."
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BookLooks ratings range from 0, "For Everyone," to 5: "Aberrant Content" for "Adult only." A BookLooks review of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye," often taught at the high school level, labeled it a "4" -- meaning it should not be read by anyone under 18.
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In other places, book purges are proceeding quietly -- sometimes by unwilling hands.
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