A canceled school visit over my new book taught me a lesson in soft censorship

Nobody likes being uninvited. It doesn’t feel nice. It definitely doesn’t feel soft. As in, soft censorship. As in, come collect these 240 copies of your children’s book, and no, we won’t be rescheduling your school visit. More on this in a minute. Updated statistics about book banning were released recently by PEN America, a nonprofit focused on free expression, and they are devastating. In the 2022-23 school year, there were 3,362 instances of book bans in U.S. public schools and libraries. Students lost access to 1,557 book titles that represent creative work by more than 1,480 authors, ill...