A Conversation with Author Jennifer Niven
Join New York Times-bestselling author Jennifer Niven for a conversation about censorship and the implications for teens and the communities where book bans happen. Niven is the award-winning author of eleven books, including YA novels All the Bright Places, Holding up the Universe, Breathless, and Take Me With You When You Go (with David Levithan). All the Bright Places has been targeted for removal in multiple locations, and Breathless was one of 52 books that were removed from shelves in Utah’s largest school district at the beginning of the school year before the school board reversed course and moved the books to a restricted section of the library that requires parental permission to access. Niven will be joined by retired educator and librarian, author, and intellectual freedom expert Pat Scales (Teaching Banned Books: 32 Guides for Children and Teens; Protecting Intellectual Freedom in Your School Library; Books Under Fire: A Hit List of Banned and Challenged Children’s Books; Defending Frequently Challenged Young Adult Books; and Encourage Reading from the Start).
Register here: https://ala-events.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__tzg1RRkT7S_8q265xOnMw]
About the Panelists
Jennifer Niven is the #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of All the Bright Places, Holding Up the Universe, and Breathless. Her books have been translated into over seventy-five languages and have won literary awards around the world. The All the Bright Places film, starring Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Luke Wilson, and Keegan-Michael Key, is currently streaming on Netflix, with a script by Jennifer and Liz Hannah (The Post). When she isn’t working on multiple book and TV projects, she also oversees Germ, a literary web magazine for high school age and beyond. Jennifer divides her time between coastal Georgia and Los Angeles. For more information, visit JenniferNiven.com and GermMagazine.com or find her on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
Pat Scales is a retired middle and high school librarian in Greenville, South Carolina. She has also served as adjunct instructor of children’s and young adult literature at Furman University and has been a guest lecturer at universities across the nation. A First Amendment advocate, she is a former chair of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, serves on the Board of Advisors of the National Coalition Against Censorship, and is a Trustee of the Freedom to Read Foundation. She is a past president of the Association of Library Service to Children and in 2011 received the association’s Distinguished Service Award. She chaired the 1992 Newbery Award Committee, the 2003 Caldecott Award Committee, and the 2001 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award Committee. She writes for Book Links magazine and writes a bi-monthly column, “Scales on Censorship,” for School Library Journal. She is the author of Teaching Banned Books: 32 Guides for Children and Teens; Protecting Intellectual Freedom in Your School Library; Books Under Fire: A Hit List of Banned and Challenged Children’s Books; Defending Frequently Challenged Young Adult Books; and Encourage Reading from the Start.