USA, Florida. Over 700 books removed from libraries. The list includes Stephen King, Margaret Atwood and others

The list of banned books included classics of American literature, such as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway and “The Song of Solomon” by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

There was also the pacifist novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, as well as “1984” by George Orwell and “The Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood, which belong to the canon of dystopian literature. There are also titles about the Holocaust: William Styron's “Sophie's Choice” and “The Diary” of Anne Frank in the form of a graphic novel. The list is full of popular literature, including many novels by Stephen King and the best-selling novel “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. Full list of titles removed from school libraries is found in a report published by Florida education officials.

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In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – in response to complaints from the conservative group Moms for Liberty – signed the landmark HB 1069 bill aimed at limiting the availability of books whose content is deemed inappropriate for children and teenagers.

A new state law introduced in July 2023 allowed parents and other Floridians to tamper with elementary, secondary and college book collections. They can object to books that they believe contain inappropriate content, including pornographic content. The ban covered institutions in 33 of approximately 70 school districts in Florida.

At the end of August this year, representatives of the largest publishing houses in the city filed a lawsuit against the state authorities USAincluding Penguin Random House and HarperCollins Publishers, alleging that school libraries in Florida have been subject to censorship that violates the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

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Sydney Booker, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Education, told the AP that Florida has not banned any books and defended the state's actions, saying their goal was to remove “sexually oriented material” from schools. – Extreme left activists are once again trying to bully Floridians about the book ban. A better question is why these activists continue to fight to expose children to sexual material, added Sydney Booker, quoted by the British newspaper “Guardian”.

The AP agency reports on Wednesday that from the day of the election Donald Trump for the office of US president, “1984” was high on the Amazon book bestseller list, as well as “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury and “The Handmaid's Tale”. Also in the top ten was Timothy Snyder's political essay “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Autobiography also appeared on the list Melania Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance's autobiographical novel “Elegy for Bidocks.”

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