@heykellyjensen
Senior Editor at Book Riot. Editor/Author of BODY TALK, HERE WE ARE, + (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY. Former librarian. Anti-censorship advocate. Yoga teacher. Your favorite infernal witch. She/her. Library Journal Mover & Shaker in 2024.
This has nothing to do with the specific content here, but Polymarket adopting the language of news, here with BREAKING, and with Texas election results earlier this week, is BAD. Polymarket is not and will never be a news org or break news. It's a betting app. It's Draft Kings for sociopaths.
The Greenville Eight and Library Discrimination, Then and Now: Book Censorship News, March 6, 2026
bookriot.com/the-greenvil...
TY @txfreedomread.bsky.social and Laney Hawes for all you do to empower #schoollibrarians! apple.co/47nfDtJ
One good thing here? Librarians who read trade reviews–and trade reviews that do their job–will be helped significantly here.
Kirkus pointed out the issue and noted the confusion over audience.
The system works, but it's a lot of extra work in this case: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...
Bezos says 17 and up, too.
I'm dying to know the conversation that was had because it wasn't like the publisher didn't get told in advance it was a GMA pick. So they, y'know, didn't stop it either.
Oh, ABSOLUTELY I believe it. You're also in a hard place if you haven't read the thing yet so you can't even speak to what it's about/what's in it/etc.
It sounds like the kind of book that adult romance readers (esp the romantasy ones) are super into and looking for.
The "YA" label does a disservice to library workers, imo, but like: publishers won't get the blowback for that. Library workers, already beleaguered w/this shit, will.
NOT HAVING READ IT, what I've read about it is there's a necrophilia scene. Sounds like the book was really better suited for adult readers, not YA; it was pubbed as YA *and* selected by Good Morning America as their YA book club pick.
I already know banners are *salivating* over this.
Librarians get screwed over along the way, especially in states where there are no protections for them and where the right wants to make up whatever they want to about library collections and materials.
Since it's been asked of me several times, here's my "take" on the Sybelline situation: the publishers get to benefit no matter what.
This is a textbook example of that. They benefit from sales of the book and they benefit from suing in book banning situations.
Protect the Freedom to Read in Massachusetts
ACTION ALERT: Massachusetts readers, ask your legislators to protect the freedom to read by supporting H.3594, An Act Regarding Free Expression. This bill would strengthen protections for libraries & students’ right to read. Send a message today: act.pen.org/a/mass-actio...
The Greenville Eight and Library Discrimination, Then and Now.
That, plus this week's roundup of book censorship news: bookriot.com/the-greenvil...
Spokane Public Library (WA) is facing a near $3 million budget crisis: www.krem.com/article/news...
The Greenville Eight and Library Discrimination, Then and Now.
That, plus this week's roundup of book censorship news: bookriot.com/the-greenvil...
The WORST.
My colleagues at ACRLog wrote short tributes to the life and work of Fobazi Ettarh @fobettarh.bsky.social. I wrote about her work on disability, which I think deserves more recognition. acrlog.org/2026/03/04/t...
Thanks @ezerrenner.bsky.social for coordinating. #CripLib #VocationalAwe
This day has been a MONTH.
More like Kristi Noem-More.
I'm so fucking worried about Britney.
Kristi Noem's "Open to Work" LinkedIn Profile
Sometimes it's worth remembering that Ben Franklin would lose his goddamn mind over using a radio, let alone a television or streaming or wifi or bluetooth or watching a video or, or, or...
The architecture we've built around all of it being key makes so much sense. I think this essay uses language so many of us hadn't quite been able to pin down.
"The choice isn’t between books and screens. The choice is between intentional design and profitable chaos. Between habitats that cultivate human potential and platforms that extract human attention."
"Your inability to focus isn’t a moral failing. It’s a design problem. You’re trying to think in environments built to prevent thinking. You’re trying to sustain attention in spaces engineered to shatter it."
"The fatalism, however beautifully expressed, serves the very interests it condemns. The technology companies would very much like us to believe that what they’re doing to human attention is simply the inevitable result of technological progress rather than something they’re doing to us"
"We give them tools designed to fracture attention and blame them when their attention fractures. We built a world that profits from distraction and then pathologise the distracted."
"The people who cannot sit through novels aren’t broken. They’re adapted to an environment we built. We hand them infinite information and wonder why they drown. "
"We’re not abandoning literacy. We’re discovering what literacy meant all along: not just the ability to decode symbols on a page, but the capacity to move fluently between all the ways humans encode meaning."
"These aren’t concessions to declining attention spans. They’re recognitions that human understanding has always been richer than any single medium could contain."
This essay is GREAT!