The Epoch Times by Bill Pan
New York City’s libraries are offering young readers across the nation free online access to books that are deemed inappropriate by parents and have been pulled from school bookshelves.
For a limited time, four books are made available nationwide by New York Public Library (NYPL) on SimplyE, a mobile application for borrowing and reading e-books from libraries. The titles include “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, “King and the Dragonflies” by Kacen Callender, “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, and “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger.
All four books have sparked controversy because of their content dealing with sex and race. “Speak,” which its critics say is akin to “soft pornography,” tells the story of a ninth-grade girl who refuses to talk after being raped at a party. “King and the Dragonflies” is about a black gay teenager struggling with his sexual and racial identity…
