One of the trends we’ll see in book censorship over 2025 is the increased use of unprofessional, politically-driven book review websites like BookLooks to make decisions in professional library and educational settings. Just days after writing that—including an example from Warren County Public Libraries in New Jersey which happened at the time of writing—another library made headlines nationwide for their decision to begin using BookLooks to make library decisions. This time, it was Anoka County, Minnesota, public schools. Many online shared anger and frustration by this decision, while others talked about how glad they were to be in a safe state with anti-book ban laws. The latter, of course, being an attitude that we’ll see continue to increase in 2025, too, and it’s an uninformed one at that. Minnesota is among the states that have an anti-book ban law in effect.
BookLooks is the most well-known website for unprofessional, biased book reviews. That’s because it is a tool created by a former Moms For Liberty member and continues to be the tool they put their weight, energy, and time behind. I broke that story back in November 2022. Much like anything related to Moms For Liberty, though, BookLooks is not the be-all, end-all when it comes to these kinds of biased “review” websites. It is simply the most well-known because it has had the most ink put behind it; Moms For Liberty, likewise, takes up far more column space when it comes to book censorship than any of the hundreds of other large and small groups nationwide doing the same kind of work. Those groups, some of which are far more dangerous and destructive than Moms, just aren’t as easy or safe to meme online (certainly misogyny plays a nice sized role in this, too—no matter how appalling Moms For Liberty is, they get more play because it is easy even for “nice people on the left” to degrade women and women-adjacent projects).
Getting up to speed on the review sources being used and given legitimacy outside of BookLooks matters because in order to effect actual change, we have to be aware of the various ways these tools are being used and implemented. Certainly, get to know BookLooks. But if your knowledge ends there, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Even since the last time I did such a roundup of these biased online book ratings systems in November 2022, more have popped up and become favored by the myriad groups working to ban books in their local community schools and public libraries.
It might not feel good to give these sites any views by clicking the links. But it is vital to see how they’re operating in order to understand why they’re not worthy of being used in professional settings. Compare review sources that are long-running, professional resources by and for library and education professionals such as Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, and you’ll see why and how any institutional leadership should be embarrassed and ashamed to even consider their use. Even Common Sense Media, which is also inappropriate for use in making determinations about library and educational acquisitions, does a better job of providing information about books and materials in context than any of these slapdash sites do.
We’ll begin with a couple of the longer running sites, including BookLooks, and then dive into several other review sites gaining traction. Even if you have just tuned into book censorship, you’ll see that the titles that pop up on these sites are those which are quickest to then begin seeing challenges in public schools and libraries. Most of those complaints are simply copy-pasted from any of these resources. Book banners can’t even be bothered not to plagiarize their grievances—a reminder why libraries and schools need to update and strengthen their collection policies in such a way to toss out complaints that do just this. If college students are getting failing grades because of terrible AI detectors falsely identifying their work as AI, then your local right-wing instigator shouldn’t be able to steal the time and money of taxpayers for challenges that they just downloaded from some site on the internet and slapped their own name on.
BookLooks
BookLooks.org began as BookLook.info and it is the creation of a former Moms For Liberty member. The site, still connected to Moms For Liberty, is regularly updated with reviews by volunteer members of the group. It utilizes a rating system created by the group that is modeled after the MPAA system—this is worth pausing with because the creation of the MPAA system came amid severe criticism. Books are rated on a scale of zero, meaning it’s a book for everyone, to five, with aberrant content for adults only. In its early iterations, any review where the book rated a four or five led to immediate challenges starting in Brevard County, Florida, schools, where Moms For Liberty is headquartered. You’d then see those same books begin to be challenged in other districts across Florida, then the country, where Moms had a local chapter. If you look back at book challenges in 2022, the same books were challenged again and again and the pattern became clear. You can read more about the origins of BookLooks in my reporting from 2022.
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