It was also the shield used against parents who dared to object to s[*]xually explicit material in school libraries. Challenge a book? You’re told the professionals already reviewed it. Object too loudly? You risk being labeled a book banner, a bigot, or worse—and in multiple cases sued.
Now the librarians themselves are admitting, in their own research and on their own podcast, that those reviews cannot be trusted. Audio, transcript, and journal article available below.
In a 2026 study published by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL, a division of the American Library Association), Books and Barriers: The Influence of Book Censorship on the Role of School Librarians, Their Self-Efficacy, and Well-Being, researchers Misty S. Schattle and Johnny R. O’Connor, Jr. interviewed eleven school librarians in one large Texas district. The librarians reported that collection development now takes far longer because:
“they often feel that the reviews cannot be trusted, requiring the need to read books in their entirety before placement on the shelf.”¹
One elementary librarian put it bluntly:
“It’s almost like we can’t go on our reviews. I’ve been reading a lot more books.”¹
Dr. Schattle expanded on these findings on the School Librarians United podcast:
“lots of librarians that I talk to were saying that they couldn’t really rely on reviews anymore because… they read a review, but are they gonna get something that is questionable… so they might still find that they needed to read it before it could go on the shelf… they’re just finding that it’s taking so much time… because now you have to read all the books.”²
This is not new. I documented the same problem more than a decade ago.
In 2010, Kalida, Ohio Superintendent Don Horstman removed Lush by Natasha Friend after a fifth grader brought it home. The book contained graphic s[*]xual details. Horstman read it himself and said the glowing professional reviews had omitted those details entirely.³ Similar patterns appear in my 2011 post on incomplete reviews⁴ and my 2009 post on a Kentucky superintendent overriding ALA lists.⁵
Librarians themselves have used the same defense when suing parents. Amanda Jones, who filed a high-profile lawsuit against parents who criticized materials in her library, has stated: “As a professional librarian, I use professional reviews about where we place books in the library.”¹¹ Her justification for the books she selects rests on the very reviewing sources that Schattle’s research and the librarians she interviewed now say cannot be trusted to flag “something that is questionable.”
Meanwhile, the American Library Association itself continues to elevate those same professional reviews. Through its Unite Against Book Bans campaign, ALA created “Book Résumés”—documents packed with awards and glowing professional reviews, designed to be handed to boards and review committees.⁶ The résumé for Gender Queer is a perfect example: starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal, YALSA and Rainbow Project lists, the Alex Award, and more. What it carefully omits is any actual content from the book.⁷
At the same time, ALA’s official policy forbids the rating systems that do document content.
The 11th edition of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Manual (2026) is explicit. On page 8 it notes that school boards and lawmakers use ratings produced by “religious and political groups” to limit access to library books and control what is added to school libraries. Chapter 7 contains an entire section on rating systems and states:
“Using, enforcing, or approving of ratings systems violates the Library Bill of Rights.”
It further warns that rating or labeling materials based on assumed age-appropriateness “may be perceived as restricting access.”⁸
On page 145 the Manual specifically addresses the sites parents actually use:
“websites like BookLooks.org and RatedBooks.org often use legal-sounding language to falsely imply that certain books that do not comply with their moral or religious beliefs are illegal and ‘harmful to minors.’ … Their claims are false and have no basis in law. Libraries should not use ratings from these sites to justify removing books from their collections, limiting access to library resources, or making decisions about what books to purchase for library collections. … publicly funded libraries should not use private content rating systems to restrict access to materials. This policy should apply to all users, including children and young adults.”⁸
Kelly Jensen at Book Riot has likewise dismissed BookLooks, RatedBooks, and similar sites as “unprofessional, biased book reviews” and “politically-driven.”⁹ Tools such as RatedBooks and the National Book Rating Index (NBRI) that actually catalog explicit content are rejected, while the professional reviews that leave librarians unsure whether a book contains “something that is questionable” remain the approved standard—until parents notice the problem, at which point the response is often a lawsuit.
So the position is now fully circular:
- The professional reviews ALA has long promoted as the gold standard for selection and defense of books are admitted by ALA’s own researchers (in an AASL journal) to be inadequate. Librarians say they can no longer rely on them and must read the books themselves.
- The rating systems that actually describe s[*]xual content, language, and other details are denounced by ALA as illegitimate tools of “religious and political groups.” Using them violates the Library Bill of Rights.
- ALA’s Book Résumés lean on the same professional reviews while omitting the content those reviews fail to flag.
- When parents point out the resulting problems, some librarians sue them for defamation while continuing to cite the very reviews now acknowledged as unreliable.
Either the approved reviews work, or they don’t. If they don’t—as Schattle’s study and the librarians themselves now say—then the tools that do provide useful information about content are the ones ALA explicitly forbids, precisely because those tools can be used to keep inappropriate material away from children.
I spoke with Brooke Stephens, founder of RatedBooks.org and the National Book Rating Index (NationalBookRatingIndex.com). RatedBooks creates reports based on a content rating scale that uses the book’s own excerpts to justify each rating. The National Book Rating Index aggregates nearly 38,000 reviews from multiple sources and can be searched for free or used by librarians to process entire library inventories and generate rating reports on matched titles. The more the ALA defends giving mature content to minors while declaring professional reviews inadequate and parent-created rating tools illegitimate, the more obvious the need for these resources becomes. Stephens is both amused and grateful for the free publicity the ALA has given her work. She sees their rejection of transparent content rating systems as further diminishing any remaining need for the organization itself.
Parents who challenged books and were attacked for it were right. The professional reviews were never the rigorous safeguard claimed. They were a convenient shield. ALA still promotes that shield through Book Résumés and selection policies while simultaneously declaring the more accurate content ratings off-limits and supporting legal action against those who notice the gap.
The result is predictable: children retain access to material that even the librarians selecting it now say they cannot trust the reviews to identify—and, as Lt. Gov. Patrick noted, the librarians are the ones who know what is on those shelves.
Endnotes:
1. Misty S. Schattle & Johnny R. O’Connor, Jr., “Books and Barriers: The Influence of Book Censorship on the Role of School Librarians, Their Self-Efficacy, and Well-Being,” School Library Research 29 (2026), https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/schattleandoconnor.pdf.
2. Dr. Misty Schattle, “Censorship’s Impact on School Librarians and their Libraries,” School Librarians United with Amy Hermon, Episode 372, August 21, 2026, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/censorships-impact-on-school-librarians-and-their/id1434321470?i=1000784807311.
3. “School Excoriates Book Reviews that Fail to Disclose ‘Graphic S[*]xual Details’ in Books for Children; Lush by Natasha Friend is ‘Wildly Inappropriate’ for Certain Children,” SafeLibraries, December 16, 2010, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/12/school-excoriates-book-reviews-that.html.
4. “False Censorship Claims Exposed by WSJ Author Attacked for Exposing Truth About Young Adult Books; Meghan Cox Gurdon Decries Incomplete and Uninformative Book Reviews,” SafeLibraries, June 8, 2011, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/06/false-censorship-claims-exposed-by-wsj.html.
5. “Kentucky School Superintendent Exposes False Cries of Censorship; Removes Educationally Unsuitable Books from Curriculum Despite Being on ALA’s List for Reluctant Readers,” SafeLibraries, November 30, 2009, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2009/11/kentucky-school-superintendent-exposes.html.
6. Unite Against Book Bans (American Library Association initiative), Book Résumés, https://bookresumes.uniteagainstbookbans.org/.
7. Book Résumé for Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, Unite Against Book Bans / ALA, https://bookresumes.uniteagainstbookbans.org/wp-content/uploads/kobabe_GenderQueer_20240214.pdf.
8. American Library Association, Intellectual Freedom Manual, 11th ed. (ALA Editions, 2026), pp. 8, 145 (and Chapter 7 on rating systems). See also ALA’s related “Labeling and Rating Systems: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.”
9. Kelly Jensen, “BookLooks, RatedBooks, and Other Unprofessional Book ‘Review’ Sites to Know: Book Censorship News, January 10, 2025,” Book Riot, January 10, 2025, https://bookriot.com/booklooks-ratedbooks-and-other-unprofessional-book-review-sites/.
10. “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Opposes Explicit Books In Schools, Pleas for Parents to Act to Get These Books Removed, Calls Out School Librarians,” SafeLibraries, August 20, 2026, https://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2026/08/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-opposes.html (quoting Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s remarks holding school librarians responsible for the presence of explicit materials and noting ALA’s role in training them).
11. Maggie Heyn Richardson, “Livingston Parish’s Amanda Jones landed in a national fight about book banning. Now, ‘That Librarian’ Has Written a Memoir,” 225 Magazine, August 8, 2024, https://www.225batonrouge.com/our-city/livingston-parishs-amanda-jones-landed-national-fight-book-banning-now-librarian-written-memoir (quoting Amanda Jones: “As a professional librarian, I use professional reviews about where we place books in the library.”).
Hear the Admission:
Listen to the librarians themselves discussing how professional reviews can no longer be trusted, followed by a transcript of what they said:
Librarians Finally Admit the Reviews They Hide Behind Are Useless
— Dan Kleinman @OccupyLibraries (@OccupyLibraries) August 22, 2026
Major exposé to be published soon.
Here's an excerpt of librarians lamenting how book reviews are no longer useful, forcing school librarians to read all books for themselves.
Transcript in attached post. pic.twitter.com/fY7y0LzkmP
Transcript:
Amy Hermon:
[Y]ou know, these attacks on their collections were happening.
Dr. Misty Schattle:
So what I found, and you have to keep in mind, this was a, this was, very much a small group of people. They were eleven librarians that I spoke with from one district, so you're talking about a very tiny population. But, they all found that their collection development processes were taking far longer than they ever had before. So, they, you know, we, we, all, as librarians, we, we read reviews, that's what we do, because unfortunately, as much as we would love to, we cannot read every book, there's just way too many out there. But I was finding that, that lots of librarians that I talk to were saying that they couldn't really rely on reviews anymore because, you know, they didn't know, were they going, you know, they read a review, but are they gonna get something that is questionable, um, you know, like, and then so they would, they might read a review and they might get something but then they might still find that they needed to read it before it could go on the shelf, or maybe they were going to public libraries and trying to find books so they could read them before they bought them. But then, you know, they're, they're still like, they're just finding that it's taking so much time, so much time that they don't have, right? And collection development, it's, it's a lengthy process anyway. Right? I mean well, maybe not, if you don't have much money to spend it don't take much time. But, if you, if you have a decent budget, you know, I, I, I don't know a single school librarian anywhere that's been like, "well, I had all this money to spend, so I was just buying whatever." I mean, nobody does that.
Amy Hermon:
Uhhh, (laughter) I, I was gonna say, back in the, uh, the ESSER days when we had ESSER funds, uh, after the pandemic, ah, there was something that I was aware was never gonna happen again in my career, but it involved a, a very small window of time and spending an amount of money that I could, could barely believe this was actually happening, it was like winning the lotto or something. But um, no, but I, I think that especially when you talk to people for whom they are not rookie librarians, these are not rookie librarians, you're dealing with people who are, in some cases, seasoned, they are veterans, they, they, this is not their first rodeo. They have built a collection repeatedly and you'd like to think that at some point you get better at this, and and you start to trust your, um, your judgment as a professional, and the longer you do this, in. The hope is that you become more confident in the decisions that you're making and you're not second-guessing yourself. But when somebody calls into question what you're doing, all of a sudden that hyper scrutiny that, that is imposed on, on the collection that we're building, this becomes an absolute, colossal, e-, e-, expensive time that we have to, to use, just to satisfy, uh, community members who have made it their life's mission to upend whatever sense of normalcy we have in our spaces.
Dr. Misty Schattle:
Yeah. It, it's just, you know, it's just crazy to me, like, I don't know. We have these degrees and, you know, we, we want to do our job, but sometimes it, it's hard, just finding the time to, to do all of the, the reading of, you know, all the books, because now you have to read all the books.
Amy Hermon:
So, I regularly hear from school librarians that there aren't enough hours in the day to do our jobs. We arrive before school early, we work through lunch, we stay late. I'm already aware that there are, uh, a number of us who have extended calendars where we have built in days where we are working either, ah, before the school year starts or well into, uh, after the school year ends. Our professional training, our judgment, apparently isn't good enough when it comes to selecting the books that we oversee. And it's just, it's not just insulting, the burden that we now have to satisfy, uh, uh, somebody's expectations of, of how we are, are, you know, supposed to be doing our jobs.
Dr. Misty Schattle:
Yeah. I think it definitely makes that harder, because, like you said, we have training for this, we go to school to, to learn how to develop collections, and, you know, I, I'm sure you did as I did took classes on collection development, but not just that, I took children's literature, I took young adult literature. I mean, I enjoyed them. Honestly I was exposed to books I probably would've never picked up on my own. And I know, like, even now looking back, looking back at those classes, I can still, you know, recall some of those books that I read in those classes back in 2007. I can say, you know like, I know that I've put specific books that I read because of those classes in specific children's hands, because that was what they needed at that moment. I've always said that my most favorite part of my job as a school librarian was connecting kids with that just-right book for them. With that book that they didn't know they needed, but they needed.
Amy Hermon:
At Wayne State University, we had to pick two of the three categories, so we had, there was a young adult course, a middle grade course, and a, ah, children's, ah, literature. And these were actually the three classes that overlapped with our School of Education. And, so that was really interesting. And I'll never forget, it was the, you know, the, the assignment was legend, it was the hundred book project. And the hundred book project, the expectation was is that we would familiarize ourselves with a hundred books during the semester and write up synopses and, and all sorts of, ah, write ups and, and critical reviews, and, and, you know, we thought it absolutely daunting at the time, but now that I think about it, it was ay, some of the most memorable activities I did and I really, really enjoyed it.
—
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