Alex Haley’s ROOTS Banned by Tennessee School District

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

James Patterson Pledges $10 million to Early Adolescent Literacy Institute

The mega-bestselling James Patterson has promised $10 million to his alma mater, Vanderbilt University. The institute will “work to address the increasingly urgent need for literacy training for students in grades four through eight.” It sounds like the institute plans to attack literacy issues from different angles. It will conduct research through partnerships with elementary and middle schools, run outreach programs that get parents and caregivers involved, instruct current and future literacy teachers, create “a living laboratory in Middle Tennessee schools,” and more.

While private citizens—no matter how rich they are—shouldn’t bear the brunt of fixing our literacy crisis, this current administration sure won’t. And while we wait for them to leave office, we get further in the hole. Hopefully, this pledge brings more attention to this mounting problem.

Alex Haley’s ROOTS Banned by Tennessee School District

On the opposite end of the book news spectrum, we have another story out of Tennessee. This time, involving the groundbreaking book Roots by Alex Haley. Roots follows Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped from Gambia as part of the transatlantic slave trade. The story follows six generations of Kinte’s descendants until it gets to Haley, who first learned of his ancestor while living with his maternal grandparents in Tennessee. The book was so influential and had such a cultural impact after it was released in 1976 that it inspired thousands of people to investigate their heritage, and its characters are permanent fixtures in pop culture.

Well, now, Knox County Schools (KCS) has removed the book from its libraries as part of the state’s “Age-Appropriate Materials Act,” which was first passed in 2022. The law prohibits titles from being on school shelves if they contain nudity, sexual abuse, sexual content, or excessive violence. Interestingly, KCS’s book-banning committee had previously voted not to ban the book after reviewing an excerpt. The committee has not said what new information has led to the current ban, however. Another curious point: the book can still be taught in classes; it just can not be on library shelves. It really feels like Tennessee has become the battleground for civil rights in this country.

The British Book Award Winners Have Been Announced

Last week, the British Book Awards—previously called “the National Book Awards” and now nicknamed “the Nibbies”—announced their winners. The awards seek to celebrate the teams surrounding books, not just the authors. Nibbie judges look at literary merit, sales success, and publishing excellence when sorting through nominees, and this year’s categories included everything from a Best Overall category to a Freedom to Publish category—the latter of which honors people who have fought for the right to read and free expression. This year, the Overall Book of the Year award went to the posthumously published Nobody’s Girl, a memoir by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, sex trafficking survivor and prominent accuser of Jeffrey Epstein.

The Bookseller has more of the winners and shortlisters.

Read Harder This AAPI Heritage Month

If you’re participating in our Read Harder Challenge this year (and I hope you are!), we have some recs for you that will also have you learning about AAPI history and culture during AAPI Heritage month. Let me just say that almost all of these are on my TBR or my AR (Already Read) lists.

Get ready for an amorphous boyfriend, a traveling nonbinary monk who collects stories (from one of my favorite writers), gothic horror in Vietnam, and more.