Virginia School Board Deploys Moms for Liberty-Associated Book Banning Tool – By Peter Montgomery (Right Wing Watch) / Aug 15, 2023
The school board in Hanover County, Virginia, changed its policies in June to give itself the power to remove any title from school libraries, and then used that power to pull 19 books from the shelves. Now the board is forcing librarians to use a book rating tool associated with the right-wing political group Moms for Liberty to review more than 100 additional books in high school and middle school libraries, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported Monday.
The paper reported that school district documents “state that educators are expected to use BookLooks, a tool associated with advocacy group Moms for Liberty, as the first authority when gauging a book’s suitability. BookLooks was first approved as a new ‘professional selection source’ at the School Board’s meeting only last Tuesday.”
While BookLooks claims not to be affiliated with Moms for Liberty, there’s plenty of documentation about close ties between the groups’ leaders, agenda, strategies, and criteria for challenging books. As Bookriot reported last year, “what appears to be an objective measure of a book’s content, mirrored after movie ratings, is anything but. It is a tool developed by Moms For Liberty being used to push their agendas even further under the guise of protecting children.”
