What Can Anne Frank, Schools, and Families Do?

Exploring Debates on Appropriate Ways of Reading

Abstract

In this work, I propose an analysis of the growing phenomenon of book persecution in Brazil, based on recent cases of suspension of the graphic novel The Diary of Anne Frank in two Brazilian schools. Assuming that there is no book outside a social, cultural, and economic structure, the paper presents a case study aiming at understanding how this phenomenon challenges the idea of censorship not as the regulation of what can or cannot be read but develops a conception of reading that is appropriate for children and adolescents. The work demonstrates how occurrences of banning, restriction, and control in other countries are related to the case, reverberating, at the local level, the initiatives of the anti-gender movement on a global scale. The work also discusses how this offensive plays a central and increasingly unquestioned role in the family's control over books.