Language & Literacy Education

Who Gets to Be in the Story?

How the rise of book challenges affects young readers’ understanding of themselves and the world around them 

Literature has always enabled readers to dive into storytelling and imagination, and it also enables them to learn more about history, cultures, and ideas.  But in the last 10 years, increasing numbers of books are being challenged or banned—almost 23,000 in the US between 2021 and 2025. Many of these are children’s literature that reflect differences in individuals, families, and communities. How is this increase in restrictions and challenges affecting students’ ability to see themselves in the stories they read and how does that impact their ability to navigate the world around them?

In this Conversation with the Dean, Dean Penny Bishop is joined by BU Wheelock’s Christina Dobbs, associate professor and director of the English Education for Equity & Justice program, and Laura Jiménez, a senior lecturer in the Language & Literacy Education program and director of the Center for Educating Critically. These experts explore how transformative literature can be when helping children develop their sense of self and understanding. 

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Highlights from the Conversation

Students Deserve to See Themselves in Books

If you do not see yourself in a piece of literature, it’s incredibly difficult to see yourself in those situations. Children learn about what is possible through lots of different input, and one of those inputs is the stories that they are told—the stories that they see, who they study, who they look at, who they read about, and the movies that are made.

Stephanie Toliver talks about this: if you cannot imagine yourself into a future, it’s harder to get there. […] By restricting the literature and the representation that we see and allow children to see, we restrict their worldview.

Laura Jiménez

The Impact of Censorship Across Literature

Nothing is safe. Someone recently challenged To Kill a Mockingbird because of Scout, the character’s gender representation. It has also been challenged several times for its racial politics. I would say a lot of this stuff is focused on young adult books and a smaller subset of picture books. But then there is another subset of sort of anything for anyone, and things that are widely regarded as classics are now being challenged in lots of spaces.

Laura Jiménez

One Step Can Make a Difference

It’s easy in the censorship realm to feel like so much is happening and it can feel like the problem is enormous. But that is what they want you to think. That is part of the goal—to make it seem so big that we can’t do anything about it.

But one email about one title is a huge step in a good direction, even if it feels like just one small thing. If everybody does just one small thing, it makes a huge difference. We win a lot of these fights, and we definitely don’t win the ones that we don’t fight.

Christina Dobbs

Conversations with the Dean are a series of webinars hosted by Dean Bishop that explore some of the most pressing topics in education. Learn more about Conversations with the Dean.