Best-selling author and historian Eric Cervini and partner Adam Powell recently converted a used school bus into a mobile library called the “Rainbow Book Bus.” This bus will provide and offer LGBTQ+ books to students that are affected by the book bans. Book bans have recently hit a nationwide high and are becoming an even bigger issue than anyone has ever anticipated, so this bus gives us hope in fighting them.
What Started It – Banning LGBTQ+ Books
It is said that in the 2021-2022 school year, 2,532 bans have been affecting 1,553 authors and artists across the United States. Over 138 school districts have implemented book bans, and it is affecting around 4 million students. Nearly half of these books have been LGBTQ+-themed books. Because of these bans, we now have the Rainbow Book Bus.
A Helpful LGBTQ+ Response
The Rainbow Book Bus has been created by ShopQueer.Co, which is an independent bookshop that splits its profits with queer authors. They founded the Rainbow Book Bus that debuted at L.A. Pride Parade, which has been built and filled with books that are pertaining to LGBTQ+ themes that have been banned across the nation in school districts. In the United States, there has been a high resurgence of book bans, especially against books that contain LGBTQ+ characters and themes. This is a form of censorship and has to be combatted and fought against so children and teens can grow and learn from every community.
Luckily we have the Rainbow Book Bus to help combat this form of censorship within schools in the country, and they even plan to go national. On their website for the Rainbow Book Bus they have a fundraiser that you can donate to, to help them reach their goal of $150,000 to have queer book fairs nationwide. These book fairs will especially happen in states that have a high commodity for anti-LGBTQ+ book bans. Like Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida where there are a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that are impacting this community. This will help have more queer books be read and shared across the United States and deserves to be supported.
I look forward to seeing all that the Rainbow Book Bus provides for the new generations in hopes to overcome this national issue. They are extremely close to their donation goal, and they will hopefully be going nationally this fall. This is exactly what our country needs at this moment, and this is amazing to hear about.
To find out more information about book bans, click here.