A recent decision by a UK school to remove a number ofbooks from its library that the Board of Governors deemed 'inappropriate' for children - has reignited a familiar and often heated debate: what should young people be allowed to read?
On one level, the instinct to protect children is understandable. Schools and parents naturally want to shield young minds from content that is excessively violent, explicit, or emotionally overwhelming. The question, however, is not whether children need guidance around their reading choices, it’s how far that guidance should go before it tips into something more restrictive and much less welcome - censorship.
History offers plenty of examples of books once considered unsuitable for young readers that are now widely regarded as essential. Stories that tackle difficult themes such as identity, injustice, mental health issues, or even grief - often do so because those are realities young people encounter in the world around them. Removing such books risks sending a different message: that these topics are too dangerous to confront, or worse, that they shouldn’t be discussed at all.
Reading is not a passive activity. Children engage with stories in complex ways, filtering what they read through their own experiences and levels of understanding. A book that feels challenging or uncomfortable can also be an entry point for discussion, reflection, and growth. When adults pre-emptively remove that opportunity, they may underestimate young readers’ ability to think critically.
There is also a practical concern. In an age whereinformation is ubiquitous, restricting access in a school library does not eliminate exposure - it simply shifts it elsewhere, often without the context orsupport that educators can provide. To quote journalist Libby Purves, writing in The Times, 'As to a politically uncleansed library causing emotional 'upset', that ship has sailed. Unless they live in a hermetically closed minority culture any kid will, by secondary school, have been exposed to horrible violence and torture on screen, on the evening news and often with laughing casualness in thrillers. They are also likely to have seen pornography, even if on someone else's phone, much of it violent or perverse. Ugliness and wickedness roll towards their eyes every day unprocessed and demanding no proper reflection.'
A library, on the other hand ideally, is not just a collection of approved texts but a space where curiosity is encouraged and questions are welcomed. The answer surely is not to create shaky barriers and obstacles to reading, but just to encourage children to discuss what they have read and share any worries, concerns or questions.
This is not to argue for a complete absence of boundaries. Age recommendations, content guidance, and thoughtful curation all have their place. But there is a meaningful difference between guiding choices and limiting them. The former empowers children to explore responsibly; the latter narrows their world.
Ultimately, fostering a love of reading means trusting young people with a degree of intellectual freedom. It means accepting that not every book will be comfortable, and that discomfort can sometimes be valuable. If the goal of education is to prepare children for the complexities of life,then their reading should reflect that complexity -not avoid it.
Rather than asking which books should be removed, perhaps the better question is how we can help children read more widely, more thoughtfully, and with the confidence to make sense of what they find. As Purves so rightly states, 'Free-range reading is a mentally healthy habit... At a time when private reading has declined we should cheer any young autodidact who bravely roams a library, facing up to unfamiliar phrases, dialogues, feelings and ideas.'
Hear, hear!