In recent years, book bans in the U.S. have surged at an alarming rate! Many target children’s books that feature diverse characters, explore social justice issues, or share the lived experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQI+ communities. These challenges go beyond politics, they represent a serious threat to representation, inclusion, and literacy, with librarians in states like Tennessee even facing criminal charges.
How is Read Your World helping fight book bans: one diverse book at a time?
Read Your World is a nonprofit organization on a mission to promote inclusive children’s literature that reflects the diverse world we live in. We believe that every child deserves to see themselves and others on the pages of the books they read. Through our platform, blog, and annual celebration of Read Your World Day we amplify underrepresented voices and work to get diverse books into the hands of families, teachers, and schools.
Books are being pulled from shelves at record rates, especially titles written by or about people of color, immigrants, Indigenous voices, and especially the LGBTQ+ community. These bans erase identity and silence stories that help children develop empathy, confidence, and a broader worldview.
In response, Read Your World raises awareness and mobilizes communities to read, share and support diverse literature.
Through our blog and social media channels, we raise awareness of books at risk of censorship. We feature author interviews, book reviews, reading resources, and curated reading lists that highlight themes often targeted by book bans: race, identity, immigration, gender, and more.
We proudly support traditional authors and publishers, as well as indie authors and small presses, voices often left out of mainstream promotion. We connect them with our network of passionate book reviewers, educators, librarians, and parents who help spread the word on diverse books. This grassroots visibility can make all the difference for a book that might otherwise be overlooked or challenged. To further support marginalized voices, we have partnered with the Pedro and Daniel Intersectionality Book Awards (PADIBA), which honor children’s books featuring protagonists with intersectional or underrepresented identities.
We don’t just talk about book bans, we help people take action. From sharing free classroom kits for educators, librarians and homeschoolers to hosting virtual events, Read Your World equips our community with tools to advocate for inclusive books in classrooms and libraries.
Our classroom kits cover a wide range of important topics designed to foster empathy, understanding, and critical thinking among students. These include Creating Inclusive Classrooms: LGBTQIA+ Classroom Kit, Climate Change: Understanding Environmental Justice, Mental Health Support for Stressful Times, and Raising Awareness of Systemic Racism in America. Other kits focus on inspiring social responsibility through themes such as Be a Champion of Change: Activism and Activists and Poverty Doesn’t Discriminate: Understanding Poverty in America. We also promote inclusivity and global awareness with kits like Physical & Developmental Challenges: Understand & Celebrate Our Differences, World Travel from Your Homeschool Table, and Everyone Is Welcome Here: Understanding Immigration and Refugees. At the heart of them all is a shared commitment to compassion, highlighted in our kit on Kindness.
Our annual Read Your World Day in January is more than a celebration, it’s a movement. By lifting up diverse stories across the globe on the same day, we send a clear message: these books matter, these voices matter, and censorship has no place in our schools or homes. During our past annual event, attendees offered real-world ideas and next steps we can all take to stand up against book bans and support diverse kidlit.
In response, Read Your World raises awareness and mobilizes communities to read, share and support diverse literature.
How do we support authors and publishers? We create meaningful opportunities for these authors to be discovered through:
By connecting readers with books that reflect the richness of our real-world diversity, we not only resist censorship, we build a more inclusive reading culture from the ground up. We never charge readers to review books, nor do we charge authors who are invited to participate in our panels or Instagram Live sessions. To continue this important work, we rely on the support of our generous donors, Medallion Sponsors, Author Sponsors, Partner Organizations and Corporate Sponsors with their sponsorship, we have been able to give FREE thousands of books (and e-books) to children across the country and the world.
Want to help fight book bans and support diverse books?
Here’s how you can get involved:
Follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, BlueSky and YouTube.
Share our blog posts and author features to help raise visibility.
Join us for Read Your World Day in January.
Gift an author sponsorship to an author you love.
When sign-ups open, sign-up to review a book.
Support authors by purchasing or reviewing their books.
They can ban books, but they can’t ban the power of representation. Read Your World is part of a growing movement that fights censorship by putting diverse stories directly into children’s hands because every kid deserves to see themselves on the page.
